Download Link as a Column of Report

Question

Hi All,
I really tried from my side to somehow implement this requirement but couldn't find a way.
Requirement: A report with two main columns - One has unique value and the other has a download link. This download link need to be used to fetch a set of data from the database table using the other column's (unique) value. Then, user should get a popup on his screen to download the fetched data in csv format.
Please give some guidance or pointers to resolve this issue.
Regards,
Mangal

Answer 1

Hi Mangal
I've done this before actually. You can create a dummy page with a process (on load before header) as a PL/SQL anonymous block. I got code from Denes Kubicek's site which has details of how to generate CSV output using the htp.prn funtion. Then I created the 'download' link in a report column to go to that page passing a value into a hidden field with the unique id of the row.
The code on the new page looks something like this but I would refer to Denes' work for full information (most of this is copied from him).
BEGIN
-- Set the MIME type
owa_util.mime_header( 'application/octet', FALSE );
-- Set the name of the file
htp.p('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="download.csv"');
-- Close the HTTP Header
owa_util.http_header_close;
htp.prn('Header Name,');
FOR x IN   (SELECT field1, field2, field3...
              FROM my_table
              WHERE my_id = :PX_HIDDEN_ID)
LOOP
-- Print out a portion of a row,
-- separated by commas and ended by a CR
htp.prn(chr(34)||x.field1   || chr(34) ||','|| chr(34) || x.field2   || chr(34) ||',' ||
         chr(34)||x.field3..... || chr(34) ||chr(13));
END LOOP;
-- Send an error code so that the
-- rest of the HTML does not render
htmldb_application.g_unrecoverable_error := true;
END;Hope this helps.
Cheers
Ben