Dynamic form search in form builder

Question

Hello folks, I am relatively new to form builder, only a few months of experience, and here is the problem that I am having.
I have this table, table1, with columns A,B,C,D..etc, I want to set up the search page in the following fashion:
- One text field for every column of the table
- The user can fill some of these text field, and leave others empty.
- the form should only search for the columns in the text fields that are not empty, for example, if I leave the text field corresponding to A empty, then I can search for any value of A.
- the result of the search is displayed in an LOV.
I have read around and I found it to be something like that in the LOV query:
SELECT *
FROM table1
WHERE
(:block.A_text_field IS NULL OR table1.A = :block.A_text_field) and
(:block.A_text_field IS NULL OR table1.A = :block.A_text_field) and etc for all columns...
Or maybe this:
SELECT *
FROM table1
WHERE (A = :block.A_text_field AND :block.A_text_field IS NOT NULL) OR
(B = :block.B_text_field AND :block.B_text_field IS NOT NULL)OR etc for all columns....
I haven't tested these two sample codes, because the server is closed currently, but would they work knowing my requirement? Would this query search for any value of B if the B_text_field was left empty? eg. user types 55 in A_text_field and leaves B_text_field empty; would it generate an LOV that shows A=55 and B any value?

Answer 1

well to my mind this where clause
(:block.A_text_field IS NULL OR table1.A = :block.A_text_field) and
(:block.B_text_field IS NULL OR table1.B = :block.B_text_field) and [...]returns:
if A_TEXT_FIELD is entered, then the column A column has to be exact the value of A_TEXT_FIELD (:block.A_TEXT_FIELD = table1.A) else if it there isn't any value entered there is no limitation for table1.A (:block.A_TEXT_FIELD is null with OR condition).
When entering A_TEXT_FIELD and B_TEXT_FIELD, both limitations have to be fulfilled (if only B_TEXT_FIELD is entered just the B_TEXT_FIELD condition has to be fulfilled of course).
When you don't enter any conditions in your textfields, you get all records from the table
whereas the second construct won't return anything if you don't enter some data in your text fields.
guess this:
:block.a_text_field is null and :block.b_text_field is null, so this would be:
(A = NULL and NULL IS NOT NULL) --this is false
OR (B = NULL and NULL IS NOT NULL) -- this is also falseyou can simply check this by issuing the following query in SQL*Plus or something:
CRONET@tcp_asterix_impl> select 1 from dual where 1 = null and null is not null;
no rows selected
CRONET@tcp_asterix_impl>So I believe the first condition does the thing you want.
regards