Import form data - load data from webserver into local Apex Application

Question

Hello Apex-Forum,
I am trying to use apex with Oracle XE for a small hotel reservation software.
Because I have no Oracle Webserver the database runs local. Now I am trying to get the bookings from the website form into my local database.
My question: Is there an easy way to recieve these formulardata by email, web service, as csv,with an db-link from an web mysql db or via UTL_HTTP?
I am not very firm in programming, so I need an easy solution. I think this might be an normal problem, but I found nothing in the forum. My goal is to have a button "refresh" in the application to get the new booking information from the webserver.
Thank you very much for every hint!
Best regards, Moritz
(Sorry for my english )

Answer 1

Hello:
I suggest you take a look at UTL_HTTP. I think it will work for what you want to do. I have provided an example below which retrieves a csv file from a US Fed Govt web site. You can put this block into a page process on your APEX page.
DECLARE
req   utl_http.req;
resp  utl_http.resp;
value VARCHAR2(1024);
BEGIN
  req := utl_http.begin_request('http://www.ofheo.gov/media/hpi/3q08hpi_reg.csv');
  utl_http.set_header(req, 'User-Agent', 'Mozilla/4.0');
  resp := utl_http.get_response(req);
  LOOP
    utl_http.read_line(resp, value, TRUE);
    dbms_output.put_line(value);   ---- do your stuff with the data retrieved
  END LOOP;
  utl_http.end_response(resp);
EXCEPTION
  WHEN utl_http.end_of_body THEN
    utl_http.end_response(resp);
END;varad