Query to get XML output for hierarchical data using FOR XML PATH in SQL Server

Question

I have a table with columns NodeId, NodeName, ParentNodeId and I want to ouput entire table data in the form of Xml like the following using SQL query. I think FOR XML PATH mode

Answer 1

This query will do it - however, it's not very clean in that you have to "manually" define the nesting and it won't just automatically scale to more levels deep....

SELECT 
    n.ID AS '@Id', 
    n.NAME AS '@Name',
    (SELECT 
        n2.ID AS '@Id', 
        n2.NAME AS '@Name',
        (SELECT 
            n3.ID AS '@Id', 
            n3.NAME AS '@Name'
         FROM 
            dbo.Nodes n3
         WHERE 
             n3.ParentNode = n2.ID
         FOR XML PATH('Node'), TYPE
        ) 
     FROM 
        dbo.Nodes n2
     WHERE 
         n2.ParentNode = n.ID
     FOR XML PATH('Node'), TYPE
    ) 
FROM 
    dbo.Nodes n
WHERE 
    n.ParentNode IS NULL
FOR XML PATH('Node'), ROOT('Nodes')

Output is:

I was hoping there would be a way to do this with a recursive CTE (Common Table Expression), but that didn't work out :-(