How To Capture A Column Value In A Report And Store It In A Variable?

Question

Portal Version: 3.0.6.6.5
RDBMS Versjion: 8.1.7.0.0
OS/Vers. Where Portal is Installed:: SunOS 5.8
I have a Portal report where I added a checkbox for each row of data that is being displayed. The user can select checkbox for as many rows as he/she wants. The user can then click a button, which iteratively passes the value of a column as a parameter to a procedure.
I am using the Portal field that ends with a ".FIELD#>" For example, if my report is based on the following SQL statement:
SELECT EMP_UNID FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE STATUS = 'E'
Then the field I am using to capture the value is <#EMP_UNID.FIELD#>
So the <INPUT> looks like:
<TD>
<INPUT TYPE="checkbox" NAME="checkboxSelect" value="<#EMP_UNID.FIELD#>">
</TD>
And the Javascript code looks like:
htp.p('<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.1">');
htp.p('<!--');
htp.p('function runAccept() {');
htp.p('for (var i=0; i<20; i++)');
htp.p('if (document.formSelect.checkboxSelect.checked == true)');
htp.p('{');
htp.p('myRegExp = /"/gi;');
htp.p('parameter = document.formSelect.checkboxSelect[i].value.replace(myRegExp, "z");');
htp.p('parameter = parameter.substring(parameter,parameter.indexOf(">")+1,parameter.lastIndexOf("<")-1)');
htp.p('alert(parameter);');
-- htp.p('CallableStatement cstmt = null;');
-- htp.p('cstmt = conn.prepareCall("{call --runAcceptRecord(parameter)}")');
-- htp.p('cstmt.execute ();');
htp.p('}');
htp.p('}');
htp.p('//-->');
htp.p('</SCRIPT>');
The problem, however, is that Portal stores not only the actual value in <#EMP_UNID.FIELD#>, but also some HTML tags, most of which can be removed via the Display Options page. There are some tags that cannot be removed in this fashion, because Portal does not allow nulls in those. So we are stuck with an HTML tag (i.e. <FONT SIZE>) that is stuffed in that variable along with the value. The problem is further complicated by the existence of double quotes within that tag that undesirably terminates the VALUE assignment.
So for instance, what you might get from Portal is this:
<TD><INPUT TYPE="checkbox" NAME="checkboxSelect" value="<FONT SIZE="+0">219</FONT>"> </TD><TD ALIGN="RIGHT"><FONT SIZE="+0">219</FONT></TD>
<TD ALIGN="LEFT"><FONT SIZE="+0">E</FONT></TD>
It is in the value="<FONT SIZE="+0">219</FONT>" part of the code where the extra double quote is terminating the Javascript code. I have tried escape() and replace() to remove the extra double quotes, but have not got it to work. The problem is happening too early at this point, and what I have tried is after the fact.
Obviously, the problem is that I shouldn't be using <#EMP_UNID.FIELD#> since the intent of this is to add html tags for display purposes. That is done by Portal, and I thus have no control over it unless I take drastic means and modify Portal's innerworkings, which I don't care to do.
My question therefore is, what other variable can I use in Reports to capture just the value? I am hoping that there is a variable in Reports like the ones for Forms which has a prefix of A_. Or is there another method for doing this?
Thanks in advance
Fred

Answer 1

I found htf.formcheckbox function which was what I needed. With that, my javascript code was cut down to just a few lines. Didn't need to strip away the html tags. This function will just return the value.
Refer to:
http://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=116534.1 for specific example of this function.
http://technet.oracle.com/doc/appsrvr4082/guides/plsql_r.pdf for a reference list of all htp's.