Bulk insert with many files inside folder - sql-server

Question

I want to read xml files with sql server. I show below how I do it.
DECLARE #testxml TABLE (IntCol int, XmlCol xml);
INSERT INTO #testxml(XmlCol)
SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(
BULK 'C:\XMLs\32056963_0001515351.xml',
SINGLE_BLOB) AS x;
SELECT * FROM #testxml
All is ok. But I need to read many files inside a folder, so I'm using:
EXEC master.sys.xp_dirtree 'C:\XMLs\',0,1;
But how can I doing a dynamic bulk insert in order to insert all xml files in the folder to #testxml?

Answer 1

I don't know if there is some way to do a bulk insert of all the files at once. I would suggest to execute your import query for each file, using dynamic queries. But in order to be able to fetch the data from the main query, you should insert the data in a temporary table, because the scope of the table variable will be limited to the dynamic query.
-- Get the file names
CREATE TABLE #files (
subdirectory NVARCHAR(255),
depth INT,
file BIT
)
INSERT INTO #files
EXEC master.sys.xp_dirtree 'C:\XMLs\',0,1;
-- Iterate through the XML files
DECLARE #filesCursor CURSOR;
SET #filesCursor = CURSOR FOR
SELECT subdirectory
FROM #files
WHERE file=1 AND LEN(subdirectory)>4 AND LOWER(RIGHT(subdirectory,4))='.xml'
DECLARE #fileName NVARCHAR(255), #query NVARCHAR(MAX);
FETCH NEXT FROM #filesCursor INTO #fileName;
-- Temporary table to store the data
CREATE TABLE #testxml (IntCol int, XmlCol xml);
WHILE ##fetch_status = 0
BEGIN
-- Build and execute the query for each file
SET #query = 'INSERT INTO #testxml(XmlCol) SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(BULK ''C:\XMLs\' + #fileName + ''',SINGLE_BLOB) AS x';
EXECUTE sp_executesql #query;
FETCH NEXT FROM #filesCursor INTO #fileName;
END
-- Closing and deallocating cursor
CLOSE #filesCursor;
DEALLOCATE #filesCursor;
-- Get the data from the temp table into your table variable.
-- If it is not necessary to use a table variable, you could read
-- the data directly from the temp table
DECLARE #testxml TABLE (IntCol int, XmlCol xml);
INSERT INTO #testxml
SELECT * FROM #testxml;
-- Deleting temp tables, as they won't be used anymore
DROP TABLE #testxml;
DROP TABLE #files;