How to fire a branch to pass parameters without url?

Question

is it possible to fire a branch when user clicks a link on the page. I have a report on a page #2 and one of the column is "serialno". When the user clicks the link, the application needs to go to page #3 and show the details for the serial. However because of security restrictions, I can't pass the serialno in the url. is it possbile to set the page item serialno on page #3 in the branch which takes the user to page #3 and show the details?. any ideas are appreciated.
Regards,
Surya
Edited by: sgodavar on Aug 13, 2010 4:10 PM

Answer 1

Hi,
Here is what I think is an easy way of doing it.
1. Edit the SERIALNO column from the Reports Attribute tab
2. Change the Column Link Target to URL
3. In URL type the line below. The #SERIALNO# is the report column
javascript:doSumbit('#SERIALNO#') 4. Write an OnSubit Computation or Process to assign the value of #SERIALNO# to the item on Page 3 (say P3_ITEM1)
   a. Assignment can be :P3_ITEM1 := :REQUEST; ( or SQL)
   b. Computation/ Process condition will be PL/SQL Expression
    regexp_like(:REQUEST,'^[[:digit:]]).*$') -- all numeric request, no semicolon at end in Apex 4
   5. Create condition branch to go to Page 3, with the above regexp_like as the condition.
Here is what will happen.
a. Clicking the link on the report will cause a submit with request = serialno (assumed to be all numeric in this example)
b. You trap and process the all numeric requests assign the request value to the item on Page3.
c. Branch to Page 3 on the same condition of request being numeric.
Above is the basic concept, you can make it more complex and flexible using prefixes and suffixes in the doSubmit and REGEXP_LIKE to allow multiple links of this type from one report.
Regards,