Is it possible to generate an XML (or csv) string from a resultset in MySQL ?
Basically I'd like to have the contents of an entire record in 1 string...
Yes, here is the documentation for XML, and a reference to the CSV question on SO.
Just a quick example, you can use xml_tag like this:
xml_tag
select xml_tag('table',table_name,null,null) from information_schema.tables where table_schema = 'INFORMATION_SCHEMA'
Comprehensive Docs: