Loop through contents of textarea / arrays in PL/SQL?

Question

Hi all,
I have the need to allow a user to update a large number of rows at once. His data source is a spreadsheet. Basically, he receives a file weekly that contains dozens of vehicle numbers and dates that they are to be delivered.
My thinking is that he can simply copy and paste these columns into a textarea, which would look like this (separated by tabs):
Vehicle Date
12345 12/31/07
23456 1/12/08
48484 1/15/08
I'm a PHP programmer, so I could easily do this by splitting taking the text area, splitting it by line returns into an array, and then further splitting it by the tab between the vehicle and the date, and using a loop, do:
UPDATE VEHICLE_TABLE SET delivery_date = TheDate WHERE VEHICLE_ID = vehicle.
I'm very new to PL/SQL and I'm not sure that this is possible. Can someone point me in the right direction or suggest a better way of doing this?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi,
it's quite easy to do the same in PL/SQL. You can use the supplied Apex_Util.string_to_table function to slice a string and put the parts into an array. See the following code as an example.
DECLARE
    vLines  Apex_Application_Global.vc_arr2;
    vFields Apex_Application_Global.vc_arr2;
BEGIN
    vLines := Apex_Util.string_to_table
                ( p_string    => :P4_TEST
                , p_separator => CHR(13) -- line break delimiter
    FOR vLineIdx IN 1 .. vLines.COUNT
    LOOP
        vFields := Apex_Util.string_to_table
                     ( p_string    => vLines(vLineIdx)
                     , p_separator => CHR(9) -- tab delimiter
        -- some basic checks
        IF vFields.COUNT <> 2
        THEN
            RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20999, 'No enough fields in line '||vLineIdx);
        END IF;
        IF vFields(1) IS NULL
        THEN
            RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20999, 'No Vehicle entered in line '||vLineIdx);
        END IF;
        IF vFields(2) IS NULL
        THEN
            RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20999, 'No delivery date entered in line '||vLineIdx);
        END IF;
        -- let's do the update
        UPDATE VEHICLE_TABLE
           SET delivery_date = vFields(2)
         WHERE VEHICLE_ID    = vFields(1)
    END LOOP;
END;Patrick
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