Get the position of xml element in SQL Server 2012

Question

How to get the row number for the rows using SQL Server 2012?

Here is the xml

<Rows>
   <Row>Coating</Row>
   <Row>Drying</Row>
   <Row>Waxing</Row>
</Rows>

I need data returned like this

RowLabel  RowNumber
-------------------
Coating    1
Drying     2
Waxing     3

Answer 1

You can use some internal knowledge about how SQL Server implements XML shredding and use row_number() like this.

declare @XML xml = 
'<Rows>
   <Row>Coating</Row>
   <Row>Drying</Row>
   <Row>Waxing</Row>
</Rows>'

select T.X.value('text()[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as RowLabel,
       row_number() over(order by T.X) as RowNumber
from @XML.nodes('/Rows/Row') as T(X)

Ref: Uniquely Identifying XML Nodes with DENSE_RANK

Or you can "play it safe" and use a numbers table.

select T.X.value('text()[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as RowLabel,
       N.Number as RowNumber
from Numbers as N
  cross apply @XML.nodes('/Rows/Row[sql:column("N.Number")]') as T(X)
where N.Number between 1 and @XML.value('count(/Rows/Row)', 'int')