How to simulate the copy row feature in Apex

Question

Ver: 4.1.0
Hi there,
I have a application (Report and form) where users can do the standard edit, create, delete and save features.
We had to add a "Copy" row option also for which I have added a radio button against each row in the report next to the edit pencil item. And that in turn is a hyperlink which opens the "Edit" page again. Right now it opens the form in edit mode for that record, which if any changes are made, updates the record. I wanted to
1. When the user makes changes and hits the save button, a new record is created and inserted. (no worries on the duplicates etc)
2. Only 2 fields need to be passed from the original report page to the copy page.
3. Or if this is not possible, then maybe if I can capture the radio button row values and try passing that onto the form using some hidden fields maybe? But how can we capture the radio button value when it is selected?
Wondering if anyone has done this before? any suggestions on how best to implement this
Thanks,
Sun
Edited by: ryansun on Oct 16, 2012 6:29 AM

Answer 1

Haven't done this but I'm gonna take a guess.
1. Have the copy row link do the same thing that the edit row does so that your row is displayed on the edit page. However somehow pass another parameter such as a unique request value or something so that the called page can "know" that it was arrived at via the intent of copying a row.
2. In the called page, have a process that detects whatever flag you passed (to know that the user wants to copy a row) and have that process null out the PK item in your page (assuming that your page drives its DML via a PK field and not ROWID). You also might need to alter your button conditions accordingly so that your create button shows (since you will be creating a new record) and your save/apply-changes button (existing records) is hidden.
3. Hopefully this is enough to fool Apex into creating a new record (since the PK is now null) and the user would be now pressing the create button to save changes to the database.
Hope this helps...if it's managed by ROWID though this approach may not work and also if there's any MD5 checksum getting in the way it might not work either but this is the approach I would try first.