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9.14. XML Functions

9.14.1. Producing XML Content
9.14.2. XML Predicates
9.14.3. Processing XML
9.14.4. Mapping Tables to XML

The functions and function-like expressions described in this section operate on values of type xml. Check Section 8.13 for information about the xml type. The function-like expressions xmlparse and xmlserialize for converting to and from type xml are not repeated here. Use of most of these functions requires the installation to have been built with configure --with-libxml.

9.14.1. Producing XML Content

A set of functions and function-like expressions are available for producing XML content from SQL data. As such, they are particularly suitable for formatting query results into XML documents for processing in client applications.

9.14.1.1. xmlcomment

xmlcomment(text)

The function xmlcomment creates an XML value containing an XML comment with the specified text as content. The text cannot contain -- or end with a - so that the resulting construct is a valid XML comment. If the argument is null, the result is null.

Example:

SELECT xmlcomment('hello');

  xmlcomment
--------------
 <!--hello-->

9.14.1.2. xmlconcat

xmlconcat(xml[, ...])

The function xmlconcat concatenates a list of individual XML values to create a single value containing an XML content fragment. Null values are omitted; the result is only null if there are no nonnull arguments.

Example:

SELECT xmlconcat('<abc/>', '<bar>foo</bar>');

      xmlconcat
----------------------
 <abc/><bar>foo</bar>

XML declarations, if present, are combined as follows. If all argument values have the same XML version declaration, that version is used in the result, else no version is used. If all argument values have the standalone declaration value yes, then that value is used in the result. If all argument values have a standalone declaration value and at least one is no, then that is used in the result. Else the result will have no standalone declaration. If the result is determined to require a standalone declaration but no version declaration, a version declaration with version 1.0 will be used because XML requires an XML declaration to contain a version declaration. Encoding declarations are ignored and removed in all cases.

Example:

SELECT xmlconcat('<?xml version="1.1"?><foo/>', '<?xml version="1.1" standalone="no"?><bar/>');

             xmlconcat
-----------------------------------
 <?xml version="1.1"?><foo/><bar/>

9.14.1.3. xmlelement

xmlelement(name name [, xmlattributes(value [AS attname] [, ... ])] [, content, ...])

The xmlelement expression produces an XML element with the given name, attributes, and content.

Examples:

SELECT xmlelement(name foo);

 xmlelement
------------
 <foo/>

SELECT xmlelement(name foo, xmlattributes('xyz' as bar));

    xmlelement
------------------
 <foo bar="xyz"/>

SELECT xmlelement(name foo, xmlattributes(current_date as bar), 'cont', 'ent');

             xmlelement
-------------------------------------
 <foo bar="2007-01-26">content</foo>

Element and attribute names that are not valid XML names are escaped by replacing the offending characters by the sequence _xHHHH_, where HHHH is the character's Unicode codepoint in hexadecimal notation. For example:

SELECT xmlelement(name "foo$bar", xmlattributes('xyz' as "a&b"));

            xmlelement
----------------------------------
 <foo_x0024_bar a_x0026_b="xyz"/>

An explicit attribute name need not be specified if the attribute value is a column reference, in which case the column's name will be used as the attribute name by default. In other cases, the attribute must be given an explicit name. So this example is valid:

CREATE TABLE test (a xml, b xml);
SELECT xmlelement(name test, xmlattributes(a, b)) FROM test;

But these are not:

SELECT xmlelement(name test, xmlattributes('constant'), a, b) FROM test;
SELECT xmlelement(name test, xmlattributes(func(a, b))) FROM test;

Element content, if specified, will be formatted according to its data type. If the content is itself of type xml, complex XML documents can be constructed. For example:

SELECT xmlelement(name foo, xmlattributes('xyz' as bar),
                            xmlelement(name abc),
                            xmlcomment('test'),
                            xmlelement(name xyz));

                  xmlelement
----------------------------------------------
 <foo bar="xyz"><abc/><!--test--><xyz/></foo>

Content of other types will be formatted into valid XML character data. This means in particular that the characters <, >, and & will be converted to entities. Binary data (data type bytea) will be represented in base64 or hex encoding, depending on the setting of the configuration parameter xmlbinary. The particular behavior for individual data types is expected to evolve in order to align the SQL and PostgreSQL data types with the XML Schema specification, at which point a more precise description will appear.

9.14.1.4. xmlforest

xmlforest(content [AS name] [, ...])

The xmlforest expression produces an XML forest (sequence) of elements using the given names and content.

Examples:

SELECT xmlforest('abc' AS foo, 123 AS bar);

          xmlforest
------------------------------
 <foo>abc</foo><bar>123</bar>


SELECT xmlforest(table_name, column_name)
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = 'pg_catalog';

                                         xmlforest
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 <table_name>pg_authid</table_name><column_name>rolname</column_name>
 <table_name>pg_authid</table_name><column_name>rolsuper</column_name>
 ...

As seen in the second example, the element name can be omitted if the content value is a column reference, in which case the column name is used by default. Otherwise, a name must be specified.

Element names that are not valid XML names are escaped as shown for xmlelement above. Similarly, content data is escaped to make valid XML content, unless it is already of type xml.

Note that XML forests are not valid XML documents if they consist of more than one element, so it might be useful to wrap xmlforest expressions in xmlelement.

9.14.1.5. xmlpi

xmlpi(name target [, content])

The xmlpi expression creates an XML processing instruction. The content, if present, must not contain the character sequence ?>.

Example:

SELECT xmlpi(name php, 'echo "hello world";');

            xmlpi
-----------------------------
 <?php echo "hello world";?>

9.14.1.6. xmlroot

xmlroot(xml, version text | no value [, standalone yes|no|no value])

The xmlroot expression alters the properties of the root node of an XML value. If a version is specified, it replaces the value in the root node's version declaration; if a standalone setting is specified, it replaces the value in the root node's standalone declaration.

SELECT xmlroot(xmlparse(document '<?xml version="1.1"?><content>abc</content>'),
               version '1.0', standalone yes);

                xmlroot
----------------------------------------
 <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
 <content>abc</content>

9.14.1.7. xmlagg

xmlagg(xml)

The function xmlagg is, unlike the other functions described here, an aggregate function. It concatenates the input values to the aggregate function call, much like xmlconcat does, except that concatenation occurs across rows rather than across expressions in a single row. See Section 9.20 for additional information about aggregate functions.

Example:

CREATE TABLE test (y int, x xml);
INSERT INTO test VALUES (1, '<foo>abc</foo>');
INSERT INTO test VALUES (2, '<bar/>');
SELECT xmlagg(x) FROM test;
        xmlagg
----------------------
 <foo>abc</foo><bar/>

To determine the order of the concatenation, an ORDER BY clause may be added to the aggregate call as described in Section 4.2.7. For example:

SELECT xmlagg(x ORDER BY y DESC) FROM test;
        xmlagg
----------------------
 <bar/><foo>abc</foo>

The following non-standard approach used to be recommended in previous versions, and may still be useful in specific cases:

SELECT xmlagg(x) FROM (SELECT * FROM test ORDER BY y DESC) AS tab;
        xmlagg
----------------------
 <bar/><foo>abc</foo>

9.14.2. XML Predicates

The expressions described in this section check properties of xml values.

9.14.2.1. IS DOCUMENT

xml IS DOCUMENT

The expression IS DOCUMENT returns true if the argument XML value is a proper XML document, false if it is not (that is, it is a content fragment), or null if the argument is null. See Section 8.13 about the difference between documents and content fragments.

9.14.2.2. XMLEXISTS

XMLEXISTS(text PASSING [BY REF] xml [BY REF])

The function xmlexists returns true if the XPath expression in the first argument returns any nodes, and false otherwise. (If either argument is null, the result is null.)

Example:

SELECT xmlexists('//town[text() = ''Toronto'']' PASSING BY REF '<towns><town>Toronto</town><town>Ottawa</town></towns>');

 xmlexists
------------
 t
(1 row)

The BY REF clauses have no effect in PostgreSQL, but are allowed for SQL conformance and compatibility with other implementations. Per SQL standard, the first BY REF is required, the second is optional. Also note that the SQL standard specifies the xmlexists construct to take an XQuery expression as first argument, but PostgreSQL currently only supports XPath, which is a subset of XQuery.

9.14.2.3. xml_is_well_formed

xml_is_well_formed(text)
xml_is_well_formed_document(text)
xml_is_well_formed_content(text)

These functions check whether a text string is well-formed XML, returning a Boolean result. xml_is_well_formed_document checks for a well-formed document, while xml_is_well_formed_content checks for well-formed content. xml_is_well_formed does the former if the xmloption configuration parameter is set to DOCUMENT, or the latter if it is set to CONTENT. This means that xml_is_well_formed is useful for seeing whether a simple cast to type xml will succeed, whereas the other two functions are useful for seeing whether the corresponding variants of XMLPARSE will succeed.

Examples:

SET xmloption TO DOCUMENT;
SELECT xml_is_well_formed('<>');
 xml_is_well_formed 
--------------------
 f
(1 row)

SELECT xml_is_well_formed('<abc/>');
 xml_is_well_formed 
--------------------
 t
(1 row)

SET xmloption TO CONTENT;
SELECT xml_is_well_formed('abc');
 xml_is_well_formed 
--------------------
 t
(1 row)

SELECT xml_is_well_formed_document('<pg:foo xmlns:pg="http://postgresql.org/stuff">bar</pg:foo>');
 xml_is_well_formed_document 
-----------------------------
 t
(1 row)

SELECT xml_is_well_formed_document('<pg:foo xmlns:pg="http://postgresql.org/stuff">bar</my:foo>');
 xml_is_well_formed_document 
-----------------------------
 f
(1 row)

The last example shows that the checks include whether namespaces are correctly matched.

9.14.3. Processing XML

To process values of data type xml, PostgreSQL offers the functions xpath and xpath_exists, which evaluate XPath 1.0 expressions, and the XMLTABLE table function.

9.14.3.1. xpath

xpath(xpath, xml [, nsarray])

The function xpath evaluates the XPath expression xpath (a text value) against the XML value xml. It returns an array of XML values corresponding to the node set produced by the XPath expression. If the XPath expression returns a scalar value rather than a node set, a single-element array is returned.

The second argument must be a well formed XML document. In particular, it must have a single root node element.

The optional third argument of the function is an array of namespace mappings. This array should be a two-dimensional text array with the length of the second axis being equal to 2 (i.e., it should be an array of arrays, each of which consists of exactly 2 elements). The first element of each array entry is the namespace name (alias), the second the namespace URI. It is not required that aliases provided in this array be the same as those being used in the XML document itself (in other words, both in the XML document and in the xpath function context, aliases are local).

Example:

SELECT xpath('/my:a/text()', '<my:a xmlns:my="http://example.com">test</my:a>',
             ARRAY[ARRAY['my', 'http://example.com']]);

 xpath  
--------
 {test}
(1 row)

To deal with default (anonymous) namespaces, do something like this:

SELECT xpath('//mydefns:b/text()', '<a xmlns="http://example.com"><b>test</b></a>',
             ARRAY[ARRAY['mydefns', 'http://example.com']]);

 xpath
--------
 {test}
(1 row)

9.14.3.2. xpath_exists

xpath_exists(xpath, xml [, nsarray])

The function xpath_exists is a specialized form of the xpath function. Instead of returning the individual XML values that satisfy the XPath, this function returns a Boolean indicating whether the query was satisfied or not. This function is equivalent to the standard XMLEXISTS predicate, except that it also offers support for a namespace mapping argument.

Example:

SELECT xpath_exists('/my:a/text()', '<my:a xmlns:my="http://example.com">test</my:a>',
                     ARRAY[ARRAY['my', 'http://example.com']]);

 xpath_exists  
--------------
 t
(1 row)

9.14.3.3. xmltable

xmltable( [XMLNAMESPACES(namespace uri AS namespace name[, ...]), ]
          row_expression PASSING [BY REF] document_expression [BY REF]
          COLUMNS name { type [PATH column_expression] [DEFAULT default_expression] [NOT NULL | NULL]
                        | FOR ORDINALITY }
                   [, ...]
)

The xmltable function produces a table based on the given XML value, an XPath filter to extract rows, and an optional set of column definitions.

The optional XMLNAMESPACES clause is a comma-separated list of namespaces. It specifies the XML namespaces used in the document and their aliases. A default namespace specification is not currently supported.

The required row_expression argument is an XPath expression that is evaluated against the supplied XML document to obtain an ordered sequence of XML nodes. This sequence is what xmltable transforms into output rows.

document_expression provides the XML document to operate on. The BY REF clauses have no effect in PostgreSQL, but are allowed for SQL conformance and compatibility with other implementations. The argument must be a well-formed XML document; fragments/forests are not accepted.

The mandatory COLUMNS clause specifies the list of columns in the output table. If the COLUMNS clause is omitted, the rows in the result set contain a single column of type xml containing the data matched by row_expression. If COLUMNS is specified, each entry describes a single column. See the syntax summary above for the format. The column name and type are required; the path, default and nullability clauses are optional.

A column marked FOR ORDINALITY will be populated with row numbers matching the order in which the output rows appeared in the original input XML document. At most one column may be marked FOR ORDINALITY.

The column_expression for a column is an XPath expression that is evaluated for each row, relative to the result of the row_expression, to find the value of the column. If no column_expression is given, then the column name is used as an implicit path.

If a column's XPath expression returns multiple elements, an error is raised. If the expression matches an empty tag, the result is an empty string (not NULL). Any xsi:nil attributes are ignored.

The text body of the XML matched by the column_expression is used as the column value. Multiple text() nodes within an element are concatenated in order. Any child elements, processing instructions, and comments are ignored, but the text contents of child elements are concatenated to the result. Note that the whitespace-only text() node between two non-text elements is preserved, and that leading whitespace on a text() node is not flattened.

If the path expression does not match for a given row but default_expression is specified, the value resulting from evaluating that expression is used. If no DEFAULT clause is given for the column, the field will be set to NULL. It is possible for a default_expression to reference the value of output columns that appear prior to it in the column list, so the default of one column may be based on the value of another column.

Columns may be marked NOT NULL. If the column_expression for a NOT NULL column does not match anything and there is no DEFAULT or the default_expression also evaluates to null, an error is reported.

Unlike regular PostgreSQL functions, column_expression and default_expression are not evaluated to a simple value before calling the function. column_expression is normally evaluated exactly once per input row, and default_expression is evaluated each time a default is needed for a field. If the expression qualifies as stable or immutable the repeat evaluation may be skipped. Effectively xmltable behaves more like a subquery than a function call. This means that you can usefully use volatile functions like nextval in default_expression, and column_expression may depend on other parts of the XML document.

Examples:

CREATE TABLE xmldata AS SELECT
xml $$
<ROWS>
  <ROW id="1">
    <COUNTRY_ID>AU</COUNTRY_ID>
    <COUNTRY_NAME>Australia</COUNTRY_NAME>
  </ROW>
  <ROW id="5">
    <COUNTRY_ID>JP</COUNTRY_ID>
    <COUNTRY_NAME>Japan</COUNTRY_NAME>
    <PREMIER_NAME>Shinzo Abe</PREMIER_NAME>
    <SIZE unit="sq_mi">145935</SIZE>
  </ROW>
  <ROW id="6">
    <COUNTRY_ID>SG</COUNTRY_ID>
    <COUNTRY_NAME>Singapore</COUNTRY_NAME>
    <SIZE unit="sq_km">697</SIZE>
  </ROW>
</ROWS>
$$ AS data;

SELECT xmltable.*
  FROM xmldata,
       XMLTABLE('//ROWS/ROW'
                PASSING data
                COLUMNS id int PATH '@id',
                        ordinality FOR ORDINALITY,
                        "COUNTRY_NAME" text,
                        country_id text PATH 'COUNTRY_ID',
                        size_sq_km float PATH 'SIZE[@unit = "sq_km"]',
                        size_other text PATH
                             'concat(SIZE[@unit!="sq_km"], " ", SIZE[@unit!="sq_km"]/@unit)',
                        premier_name text PATH 'PREMIER_NAME' DEFAULT 'not specified') ;

 id | ordinality | COUNTRY_NAME | country_id | size_sq_km |  size_other  | premier_name  
----+------------+--------------+------------+------------+--------------+---------------
  1 |          1 | Australia    | AU         |            |              | not specified
  5 |          2 | Japan        | JP         |            | 145935 sq_mi | Shinzo Abe
  6 |          3 | Singapore    | SG         |        697 |              | not specified

The following example shows concatenation of multiple text() nodes, usage of the column name as XPath filter, and the treatment of whitespace, XML comments and processing instructions:

CREATE TABLE xmlelements AS SELECT
xml $$
  <root>
   <element>  Hello<!-- xyxxz -->2a2<?aaaaa?> <!--x-->  bbb<x>xxx</x>CC  </element>
  </root>
$$ AS data;

SELECT xmltable.*
  FROM xmlelements, XMLTABLE('/root' PASSING data COLUMNS element text);
       element        
----------------------
   Hello2a2   bbbCC  

The following example illustrates how the XMLNAMESPACES clause can be used to specify the default namespace, and a list of additional namespaces used in the XML document as well as in the XPath expressions:

WITH xmldata(data) AS (VALUES ('
<example xmlns="http://example.com/myns" xmlns:B="http://example.com/b">
 <item foo="1" B:bar="2"/>
 <item foo="3" B:bar="4"/>
 <item foo="4" B:bar="5"/>
</example>'::xml)
)
SELECT xmltable.*
  FROM XMLTABLE(XMLNAMESPACES('http://example.com/myns' AS x,
                              'http://example.com/b' AS "B"),
             '/x:example/x:item'
                PASSING (SELECT data FROM xmldata)
                COLUMNS foo int PATH '@foo',
                  bar int PATH '@B:bar');
 foo | bar
-----+-----
   1 |   2
   3 |   4
   4 |   5
(3 rows)

9.14.4. Mapping Tables to XML

The following functions map the contents of relational tables to XML values. They can be thought of as XML export functionality:

table_to_xml(tbl regclass, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
query_to_xml(query text, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
cursor_to_xml(cursor refcursor, count int, nulls boolean,
              tableforest boolean, targetns text)

The return type of each function is xml.

table_to_xml maps the content of the named table, passed as parameter tbl. The regclass type accepts strings identifying tables using the usual notation, including optional schema qualifications and double quotes. query_to_xml executes the query whose text is passed as parameter query and maps the result set. cursor_to_xml fetches the indicated number of rows from the cursor specified by the parameter cursor. This variant is recommended if large tables have to be mapped, because the result value is built up in memory by each function.

If tableforest is false, then the resulting XML document looks like this:

<tablename>
  <row>
    <columnname1>data</columnname1>
    <columnname2>data</columnname2>
  </row>

  <row>
    ...
  </row>

  ...
</tablename>

If tableforest is true, the result is an XML content fragment that looks like this:

<tablename>
  <columnname1>data</columnname1>
  <columnname2>data</columnname2>
</tablename>

<tablename>
  ...
</tablename>

...

If no table name is available, that is, when mapping a query or a cursor, the string table is used in the first format, row in the second format.

The choice between these formats is up to the user. The first format is a proper XML document, which will be important in many applications. The second format tends to be more useful in the cursor_to_xml function if the result values are to be reassembled into one document later on. The functions for producing XML content discussed above, in particular xmlelement, can be used to alter the results to taste.

The data values are mapped in the same way as described for the function xmlelement above.

The parameter nulls determines whether null values should be included in the output. If true, null values in columns are represented as:

<columnname xsi:nil="true"/>

where xsi is the XML namespace prefix for XML Schema Instance. An appropriate namespace declaration will be added to the result value. If false, columns containing null values are simply omitted from the output.

The parameter targetns specifies the desired XML namespace of the result. If no particular namespace is wanted, an empty string should be passed.

The following functions return XML Schema documents describing the mappings performed by the corresponding functions above:

table_to_xmlschema(tbl regclass, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
query_to_xmlschema(query text, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
cursor_to_xmlschema(cursor refcursor, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

It is essential that the same parameters are passed in order to obtain matching XML data mappings and XML Schema documents.

The following functions produce XML data mappings and the corresponding XML Schema in one document (or forest), linked together. They can be useful where self-contained and self-describing results are wanted:

table_to_xml_and_xmlschema(tbl regclass, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
query_to_xml_and_xmlschema(query text, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

In addition, the following functions are available to produce analogous mappings of entire schemas or the entire current database:

schema_to_xml(schema name, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
schema_to_xmlschema(schema name, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
schema_to_xml_and_xmlschema(schema name, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

database_to_xml(nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
database_to_xmlschema(nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
database_to_xml_and_xmlschema(nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

Note that these potentially produce a lot of data, which needs to be built up in memory. When requesting content mappings of large schemas or databases, it might be worthwhile to consider mapping the tables separately instead, possibly even through a cursor.

The result of a schema content mapping looks like this:

<schemaname>

table1-mapping

table2-mapping

...

</schemaname>

where the format of a table mapping depends on the tableforest parameter as explained above.

The result of a database content mapping looks like this:

<dbname>

<schema1name>
  ...
</schema1name>

<schema2name>
  ...
</schema2name>

...

</dbname>

where the schema mapping is as above.

As an example of using the output produced by these functions, Figure 9.1 shows an XSLT stylesheet that converts the output of table_to_xml_and_xmlschema to an HTML document containing a tabular rendition of the table data. In a similar manner, the results from these functions can be converted into other XML-based formats.

Figure 9.1. XSLT Stylesheet for Converting SQL/XML Output to HTML

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>

  <xsl:output method="xml"
      doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"
      doctype-public="-//W3C/DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
      indent="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="/*">
    <xsl:variable name="schema" select="//xsd:schema"/>
    <xsl:variable name="tabletypename"
                  select="$schema/xsd:element[@name=name(current())]/@type"/>
    <xsl:variable name="rowtypename"
                  select="$schema/xsd:complexType[@name=$tabletypename]/xsd:sequence/xsd:element[@name='row']/@type"/>

    <html>
      <head>
        <title><xsl:value-of select="name(current())"/></title>
      </head>
      <body>
        <table>
          <tr>
            <xsl:for-each select="$schema/xsd:complexType[@name=$rowtypename]/xsd:sequence/xsd:element/@name">
              <th><xsl:value-of select="."/></th>
            </xsl:for-each>
          </tr>

          <xsl:for-each select="row">
            <tr>
              <xsl:for-each select="*">
                <td><xsl:value-of select="."/></td>
              </xsl:for-each>
            </tr>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </table>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>