Help by setting up a conditional process in regards to a collection, error

Question

I have a simple application containing 2 pages:
page 1: catalog
page 2: order overview page
on page 1 is a report with a list of articles, one column in the report is a link which branches to page 2 filling in a bindvariable. Sofar, not a problem. When the user first comes on page 2, a collection must be made, so I made a process called: make collection.
Code
HTMLDB_COLLECTION.CREATE_COLLECTION(
p_collection_name => 'SHOPPINGCART' );
commit;
This works, but the user will visit this page more than once, and he will be branching to this page based on several buttons also on page 2, the collection only needs to be made once. So how do I make in this case the process conditional, I already had a look at:
Verifying Whether a Collection Exists
Use COLLECTION_EXISTS to determine if a collection exists.
HTMLDB_COLLECTION.COLLECTION_EXISTS (
p_collection_name => collection name );
Which is a boolean, thank you Jes for helping me out there, and can have a value of:
IN/OUT
Tried a bunch of things didn't manage to get it to work. Now it fires everytime, and delivers an error stating the collection already exists. Please advice how to construct the conditional part of the process, the function as mentioned above HTMLDB_COLLECTION.COLLECTION_EXISTS should be helpful, getting nowhere, read the documentation abot the conditional parts, still no luck. Please help
Anyone?
Message was edited by:
Peter

Answer 1

Hi Pete,
Change your process to something like -
DECLARE
  bExists BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
  bExists := HTMLDB_COLLECTION.COLLECTION_EXISTS(p_collection_name => 'SHOPPINGCART');
  IF NOT(bExists) THEN
    HTMLDB_COLLECTION.CREATE_COLLECTION(p_collection_name => 'SHOPPINGCART');
  END IF;
END;