Create link to delete item (in non-edit mode)

Question

Hi there,
I've been trying to create a portlet that displays items (titles + edit- and delete-links) and I got so far as to be able to create the edit-link and that seems to work. The edit link is as follows (p_news is an wwsbr_all_items%rowtype)
htp.p('<a href="/portal/pls/portal/PORTAL.wwv_edit_tab.edititem?p_thingid='|| p_news.ID ||'&p_cornerid='||p_news.folder_id||'&p_siteid='||  p_news.caid||'&p_language=sf&p_looplink='|| p_link||'&p_itemtype=basetext&p_topicid=-1&p_topicsiteid=0&p_cornerlinkid=&p_parentid=0&p_currcornerid=&p_containerpageid='|| p_news.folder_id||'">Edit</a>');and after a lot of head scratching, I managed to create a delete link as follows:
htp.p('<a href="/portal/pls/portal/PORTAL.wwpob_page_dialogs.delete_portlets_dlg?p_instance_list='|| p_news.caid||'_'|| (TO_NUMBER(p_news.id)-1)||'_'||  p_news.caid||'_'|| p_news.folder_id||'_'|| p_news.folder_id||'&p_in_edit_mode=1&p_back_url='||p_link||'&p_confirm_url='||p_link||'&p_mode=3">delete</a>');Now what really makes me wonder is this bit:
p_instance_list='|| p_news.caid||'_'|| (TO_NUMBER(p_news.id)-1)||'_'||  p_news.caid||'_'|| p_news.folder_id||'_'|| p_news.folder_id||'&and specifically the
(TO_NUMBER(p_news.id)-1)I mean, it works (unlike everything else i tried in the past few days). But can this be true? Can I use this unbelievanble hack-like "solution" in production? Is there a Oracle-approved way of creating delete-links programmatically (outside the html layout templates)?
Rgds, stupefied in Finland
Edit: gaaah, how do I get multiple rows of code and not one real long one..? >:(
Edited by: Baguette on 05-May-2010 03:57

Answer 1

The API calls are normally executed within scripts but you could obviously call them from a PL/SQL item as well.
The API call works fine in 10.1.4.2. Did a simple test :
<ol>
<li>Create a page group called 'test'
<li>Add two items of type base URL
<li>Created a small anonymous block with the following code :
DECLARE
  CURSOR c1 IS
    SELECT masterthingid,id,version,iscurrentversion,active,siteid,name
    FROM portal.wwv_things WHERE siteid = (SELECT id FROM portal.wwsbr_sites$
    WHERE name = '&PgName') and itemtype = 'baseurl' ORDER BY masterthingid ;
BEGIN
  FOR c1_rec IN c1 LOOP
  dbms_output.put_line('Now deleting item '||c1_rec.name) ;
  portal.wwsbr_api.delete_item(
          p_master_item_id=>c1_rec.masterthingid
         ,p_caid=>c1_rec.siteid
         ,p_mode=>portal.wwsbr_api.DELETE_ITEM_DEFAULT
         ,p_version_number=>NULL) ;
  END LOOP ;
EXCEPTION
     WHEN wwsbr_api.ITEM_ALREADY_DELETED THEN
       dbms_output.put_line('ITEM_ALREADY_DELETED');
     WHEN wwsbr_api.ITEM_ACTIVE_VERSION THEN
       dbms_output.put_line('ITEM_ACTIVE_VERSION');
     WHEN wwsbr_api.INVALID_VERSION_NUMBER THEN
       dbms_output.put_line('INVALID_VERSION_NUMBER');
     WHEN wwsbr_api.INVALID_MODE THEN
       dbms_output.put_line('INVALID_MODE');
     WHEN wwsbr_api.INVALID_CAID THEN
       dbms_output.put_line('INVALID_CAID');
     WHEN wwsbr_api.INVALID_ITEM_ID THEN
       dbms_output.put_line('INVALID_ITEM_ID ');
END ;
/<li>Ran this code.
<li>Invalidated the web cache for the root page of test. The items were deleted
</ol>
Calling the API directly through your browser is tricky. I tried it and got the following error first :
+10/05/07 11:57:16 portal: [module=RepositoryServlet, ecid=79740104487,1] ERROR: Repository Gateway error: Request Processing Error:+
portal.wwsbr_api.delete_item: PROCEDURE DOESN'T EXIST
This is normal as the procedure is executed by PORTAL_PUBIC. Granting execute privileges on wwsbr_api to public did not help. The error message changed to :
+10/05/07 11:58:27 portal: [module=RepositoryServlet, ecid=79740176945,1] ERROR: Repository Gateway error: Database Error: ORA=6502 ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character to number conversion error+
ORA-06512: at line 31
In this case, you probably need to wrap the wwsbr_api.delete_item() procedure into your own procedure and call this from your portlet.
Hope this helps,
EJ