oracle plsql: how to parse XML and insert into table

Question

How to load a nested xml file into database table ?

<?xml version="1.0" ?> 
<person>
   <row>
       <name>Tom</name>
       <Address>
           <State>California</State>
           <City>Los angeles</City>
       </Address>
   </row>
   <row>
       <name>Jim</name>
       <Address>
           <State>California</State>
           <City>Los angeles</City>
       </Address>
   </row>
</person>       

In this xml, person is the table name , name is the filed name, Tom is its filed value. Address is a subtable and state and city is two column inside Address. I want to insert the person row into person table, if it failed , do not insert into address table. This xml could be very big. What's the best solution to do this ?

Answer 1

You can load an XML document into an XMLType, then query it, e.g.:

DECLARE
  x XMLType := XMLType(
    '<?xml version="1.0" ?> 
<person>
   <row>
       <name>Tom</name>
       <Address>
           <State>California</State>
           <City>Los angeles</City>
       </Address>
   </row>
   <row>
       <name>Jim</name>
       <Address>
           <State>California</State>
           <City>Los angeles</City>
       </Address>
   </row>
</person>');
BEGIN
  FOR r IN (
    SELECT ExtractValue(Value(p),'/row/name/text()') as name
          ,ExtractValue(Value(p),'/row/Address/State/text()') as state
          ,ExtractValue(Value(p),'/row/Address/City/text()') as city
    FROM   TABLE(XMLSequence(Extract(x,'/person/row'))) p
    ) LOOP
    -- do whatever you want with r.name, r.state, r.city
  END LOOP;
END;