Calling report from form. Need PDF output

Question

I am calling a report from a form using RUN_PRODUCT. I need to display the form in PDF format. When the user clicks the button in the form to run the report, acrobat reader should open up and the report displayed there. Please help.
Thanks

Answer 1

Thanks for the response. The first part worked. I am able to get the output in PDF format. In the 2nd part where I want to open acrobat and display the output, I am having some trouble with the code. When I compile, it says
win_api_environment.read_registry must be declared. Is there some package I need to attach?
Also, in the After reports trigger, how do I pass vFile (I am assuming this is the PDF file name)?
Thanks
The first thing you'll want to do is pass parameters to the report IE DESTYPE, DESNAME and DESFORMAT where these could be FILE, 'c:\temp\report' and PDF.
Then, you can try this piece of code I wrote (with some help from other people at Metalink and here) sometime back. Now, I call it from forms, but in your case, you'd have to run it in the after report trigger. Since with RUN_PRODUCT you don't know when the report is finished, if you did it from the form, it wouldn't work correctly.
PROCEDURE OPEN_PDF(vFile IN VARCHAR2)
IS
vcServerApp varchar2(40);
vcServerTag varchar2(600);
vcCommand varchar2(2000);
iArgPos pls_integer;
dummy NUMBER;
BEGIN
-- 1 get the Server App for .PDF files
vcServerApp := win_api_environment.read_registry('HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\.PDF','',true);
-- 2 get the executable
vcServerTag := 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\'||
vcServerApp||'\SHELL\OPEN\COMMAND';
vcCommand:= win_api_environment.read_registry(vcServerTag,'',true);
-- 3 Sort out how to specify the Filename
iArgPos:= instr(vcCommand,'%1');
if iArgPos = 0 then --no substitution Var on the command line
vcCommand := vcCommand||' '||vFile;
else
vcCommand := substr(vcCommand,1,(iArgPos-1))||
vFile||substr(vcCommand,(iArgPos+2));
end if;
-- 4 Run using Winexec (or Host if preferred).
win_api_shell.winexec(vcCommand);
EXCEPTION
when no_data_found then
abortt('Acrobat Reader was not found! Please consult with your help desk to install it and try again.','N');
END;
Chad
I am calling a report from a form using RUN_PRODUCT. I need to display the form in PDF format. When the user clicks the button in the form to run the report, acrobat reader should open up and the report displayed there. Please help.
Thanks