[!INCLUDEtsql-appliesto-ss2012-asdb-xxxx-xxx-md]

Parse converts the canonical string representation of a hierarchyid to a hierarchyid value. Parse is called implicitly when a conversion from a string type to hierarchyid occurs. Acts as the opposite of ToString. Parse() is a static method.

-- Transact-SQL syntax  
hierarchyid::Parse ( input )  
-- This is functionally equivalent to the following syntax   
-- which implicitly calls Parse():  
CAST ( input AS hierarchyid )  

-- CLR syntax  
static SqlHierarchyId Parse ( SqlString input )   

input
[!INCLUDEtsql]: The character data type value that is being converted.

CLR: The String value that is being evaluated.

SQL Server return type:hierarchyid

CLR return type:SqlHierarchyId

If Parse receives a value that is not a valid string representation of a hierarchyid, an exception is raised. For example, if char data types contain trailing spaces, an exception is raised.

The following code example uses ToString to convert a hierarchyid value to a string, and Parse to convert a string value to a hierarchyid.

DECLARE @StringValue AS nvarchar(4000), @hierarchyidValue AS hierarchyid  
SET @StringValue = '/1/1/3/'  
SET @hierarchyidValue = 0x5ADE  
  
SELECT hierarchyid::Parse(@StringValue) AS hierarchyidRepresentation,  
@hierarchyidValue.ToString() AS StringRepresentation ;
GO  

[!INCLUDEssResult]

hierarchyidRepresentation    StringRepresentation
-------------------------    -----------------------
0x5ADE                       /1/1/3/

The following code snippet calls the Parse() method:

string input = “/1/2/”;  
SqlHierarchyId.Parse(input);  

hierarchyid Data Type Method Reference
Hierarchical Data (SQL Server)
hierarchyid (Transact-SQL)