Remove XML Tags with White space.

Question

Hi All, I have a scenario like the below code where I have empty spaces in few columns of my tables. I create XML of the data and send it. There is a lot of code such and I can't add ISNULL() on each and every column. Is there any simple one line code working
with the XML so that I can remove the tags with only empty spaces. TIA.
DECLARE @xml1 VARCHAR(max)
DECLARE @xml2 VARCHAR(max)
set @xml1 = (SELECT 1 AS Col11, ' ' AS Col21, 'ABC' AS Col31 FOR XML RAW, ELEMENTS)
set @xml2 = (SELECT 2 AS Col12, ' ' AS Col22, 'ABC' AS Col32 FOR XML RAW, ELEMENTS)
DECLARE @xml xml;
SET @xml = Cast('<ROOT>' + ISNULL(@xml1, '') + ISNULL(@xml2, '') + '</ROOT>' as xml)
SET @xml.modify('delete //*[not(node())]');
-- Some Way to Remove the XML Tags with Empty space here.
select @xml as XMLString
/* Output of the Above script.
<ROOT>
<row>
<Col11>1</Col11>
<Col21> </Col21> -- This XML Tag with a white space should be removed
<Col31>ABC</Col31>
</row>
<row>
<Col12>2</Col12>
<Col22> </Col22> -- This XML Tag with a white space should be removed
<Col32>ABC</Col32>
</row>
</ROOT>
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Answer 1

It would have helped if there had been a trim() function in XQuery.
With some trial and error and inventive thinking I came up with this:
<span style="color:Blue">SET</span> @xml.modify(<span style="color:#A31515">'delete //*[. <= " "]'</span>);
As they say: it seems to work. But I leave no warranties.
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, [email protected]
Wow Erland  this
seems to work, I need to test it against my data and update on this. Thanks again.
Welcome to MSDN Forums.
Feel free to ask your questions and Please Note to Vote all helpful topics and
Mark all answering posts.
You Value Community's efforts and Community values your faith.
- Arun Kumar Allu