Custom function to return no_of_records

Question

hello
i wrote a simple function
create or replace
FUNCTION "GET_COUNT"("TABLE_NAME" IN VARCHAR2) RETURN NUMBER IS
    no_of_records NUMBER := 0;
BEGIN
       select count(*)
       from TABLE_NAME
       into no_of_records;
    EXCEPTION
        WHEN OTHERS THEN
            return no_of_records; 
    RETURN no_of_records;
END;however it would not compile
error at the select statment;
id appreciate if anyone could point what is wrong with this function?
thank you
rgds

Answer 1

UserMB wrote:
i wrote a simple function
however it would not compileThis is not really the best of design approaches - it requires dynamic SQL and raises several interface and usability and security issues.
But assuming you are simply testing the water - it should look something like the following. Also note that uppercase is not abused and camelcase and pascalcase used as per the naming standards used by most languages, including .Net and Java.
create or replace function GetRowsInTable( tableName varchar2 ) return integer is
  cnt  integer;
begin
  execute immediate 'select count(*) from '||tableName into cnt;
  return( cnt );
end;The only exception that is likely to be raised is ORA-00942: table or view does not exist - you can decide to trap that exception and for example return a null to indicate no count exists, or simply leave it as is above and have the caller deal with the exception and decide how to re-act to it.
And please keep in mind - the above function is not how one should be designing code for an Oracle application.