How to automatically startup a report in a new window after committing a form

Question

I have a form on a portal-page. The user enters values in the form and presses the INSERT button.
After doing so, I want to show a report in a NEW window querying some values the user entered in the form.
I was hoping to be able to use the After Processing Form PLSQL-section as follows:
declare
l_id integer;
l_url varchar2(2000);
begin
l_id := p_session.get_value_as_NUMBER(
p_block_name => 'DEFAULT',
p_attribute_name => 'A_ID');
l_url := 'APP_OWNER.MY_REPORT.show?'
| | 'p_arg_names=id&p_arg_values='
| | to_char(l_id);
htp.p('<a href="' &#0124; &#0124; l_url &#0124; &#0124;' target="_blank"></a>');
end;
But I see only "Inserted one record" and no report is started.
I've tried to use the after-form-processing part, but it seems I can only startup reports in the same window with GO and CALL.
Also the ID-variable can not be read from that part.
A second solution I tried was to put this PLSQL in the PLSQL-handler-section of the button, but for some reason all double quotes " are automatically changed into single quotes ' causing several Java-script errors. Perhaps a bug?
Does anyone have a solution for this functionality?
Thanks,
Jan Willem Vermeer

Answer 1

Hi,
There are 2 scenarios I can think of:
1. The value of ORD_ID is not known until the insert processing completed.
2. The value of ORD_ID is known and can be retrieved without a roundtrip to the server.
The 2nd scenario is being simpliest and could be done from Javascript w/out any server involvement, all you need is the getField() function (or any other function to get the field value) described here : http://technet.oracle.com:89/ubb/Forum81/HTML/000073.html
Javascript piece goes something like this:
myWindow = window.open("http://myhost/portal30/pos.APPROVAL_INVOICE_DYN.show?p_arg_names=ord_id&p_arg_values=" + getField(this.form,"ORD_ID"),
"myWindowName","toolbar=yes,location=yes,directories=no,status=yes,menubar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,height=400,width=600");
The first scenario is more complicated.
During the "accept cycle", when your PLSQL insert/update etc. event handlers are
fired all the processing output will happen into the current window.
Neither owa_util.redirect_url() nor wwa_app_module.set_target() will help.
Both of them will do a redirect only in the current browser window,
actually, wwa_app_module.set_target() internally calls owa_util.redirect_url().
What you need is:
1. Get the field value, and either: 1. store it somewhere in a package variable,
or: 2. do this all at once in "before displaying the page"
2. After the form processing is completed (but not in the onSuccess!!! code),
open a new browser window w/Javascript specifying the same url you were passing to
set_target().
Here is my example, place following code into "before displaying the page" additional PLSQL block:
declare
l_id integer;
begin
l_id := p_session.get_value_as_NUMBER(
p_block_name => 'DEFAULT',
p_attribute_name => 'A_ORD_ID');
if l_id is not null then
htp.p('{SCRIPT} var myWindow = window.open("http://myhost/portal30/pos.APPROVAL_INVOICE_DYN.show?p_arg_names=ord_id&p_arg_values=' &#0124; &#0124; l_id &#0124; &#0124; '",
"mySubWindow","toolbar=yes,location=yes,directories=no,status=yes,menubar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,height=400,width=600");
myWindow.focus();
{SCRIPT}');
end if;
end;
To do: you will need to add more logic to decide when to open a new window,
whatever is appropriate for your application,
rather than just 'is null' check I did.
Hope this will help.
Thanks,
Dmitry