How to handle the ref cursor which is returning "no rows"

Question

I have written a function which is returning the REF CURSOR. But in one situation the REF CURSOR returns "no rows selected". To handle this situation an exception is raised "when no data found". But i dont know in this situation how should NULL cursor be returned through this function. Since I want to call this function in another procedure so something should be returned through this function by means of ref cursor. But since i am not able to handle this "no rows selected" situation i am not able move further.
Thanks in advance........

Answer 1

I agree.
You would simply process the returned ref cursor irrespective of any rows actually returned in the cursor or not. You would be able to do at least one FETCH from the cursor (even if it does not actually contain any rows) and then determine the %NOTFOUND status to do the rest of the processing.
SQL> variable cur refcursor
SQL> exec open :cur for select * from scott.emp where rownum = 1 ;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> print cur
     EMPNO ENAME      JOB              MGR HIREDATE           SAL       COMM     DEPTNO
      7369 SMITH      CLERK           7902 17-DEC-1980        800                    20
1 row selected.
SQL>
SQL> exec open :cur for select * from scott.emp where 1 = 2 ;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> print cur
no rows selected
SQL>
SQL> SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
SQL> DECLARE
  2      rec scott.emp%ROWTYPE;
  3      bol BOOLEAN;
  4      cur sys_refcursor;
  5  BEGIN
  6      OPEN cur FOR
  7          SELECT * FROM scott.emp WHERE 1 = 2; /* assume this is your function call returning a ref cursor */
  8      bol := FALSE;
  9      LOOP
10          FETCH cur
11              INTO rec;
12          EXIT WHEN cur%NOTFOUND;
13          --
14          -- process the data here
15          --
16          bol := TRUE;
17      END LOOP;
18      CLOSE cur;
19      IF (bol)
20      THEN
21          dbms_output.put_line('At least one row was found');
22      ELSE
23          dbms_output.put_line('No rows were selected');
24      END IF;
25  END;
26  /
No rows were selected
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>