Date Picker Error when not valid date

Question

I have a field with a date picker. I have an inline validation of type pl/sql error that checks to see that the user actually entered a valid date
l_date := todate(:P1_MYDATE, '&PICK_DATE_FORMAT_MASK.');
Works fine, except, next to the field (between the field and the date picker) I get this "junk"
Unable to cast value "03/35/2004" to date format mask PICK_DATE_USING_FLOW_FORMAT_MASK
This is pretty ugly, especially as I am already telling them they made a mistake.
Would you like me to log a bug?
Also . . . it would be great to have a built in validation for dates. Any thoughts there? Perhaps an enhancement request?
Thanks,
a-

Answer 1

Anton,
This is definitely pretty ugly and should be handled more gracefully. As it stands now, there is no way to suppress this automatic casting to a date value.
You can work around it by clearing session state for that item if the validation fails. You could do this in a validation of type Function Returning Boolean with:
declare
l_date date;
begin
l_date := to_date(:P1_MYDATE,'&PICK_DATE_FORMAT_MASTK.');
return true;
exception
when others then
:P1_MYDATE := NULL;
return false;
end;
The idea for a built-in validation for dates is a great one. HTML DB has all the information (what type of date picker, any format masks, NLS settings) to determine the validity of a date value.
Joel