Submit page before launching report link

Question

When I define a link on a column in a report region declaratively (using Report Attributes) and point it to the same page (or another page), it creates the link using a URL redirect type of thing. The current page is not submitted before launching the new page.
This is causing me grief since changes on my page that the launched link needs are not stored in session state. How can I submit the current page before launching the link?
Thanks

Answer 1

Vikas,
Redirecting is no different from clicking on any hyperlink anywhere on the web, a link doesn’t submit form data, it just goes to another page and might set some data via URL. But form data is not submitted. If you want to have your form data sent to the server, you need to submit an HTML form. HTML DB lets you do that e.g. by calling doSubmit. But this doSubmit call must not be accompanied by a redirect. Just a plain submit, and a branch that lets you define where to go next (e.g. same page). So setting any values via URL will not work when submitting the page. Submitting calls wwv_flow.accept, not f?p. This is why you need to set a form item (page item) on the client via Java Script first before calling doSubmit so that you can referebce that form item later to identify the proper row in your report. To give you an example, just take a look at how I implemented to reports attributes page. Edit any report, go to reports attributes and look at the report that shows your columns. There’s an edit icon on each row. Hover over with your mouse and note that this calls Java Script: setColumnIDAndSubmit. Look at the HTML code, find that function and look how it sets a page item value to the current column ID.
Marc