Simple Search Portlet

Question

I am working in Portal 3.0. I want to create a small portlet on a page that returns one record. I want the user to input a bind variable and have the result returned to the same window with a reset button that will refresh to a new form...all within the same portlet window. What component should I use?

Answer 1

You will create a page and place on the page two portlets. This example will only work if you place the portlets on a page. One portlet will be a simple form that will ask a user for some input that will be sent to the report through the URL. Once the user clicks the button, the portlet will call the page that it's on and append to the URL the information typed by the user. The report on the page will read the url and output the results on the same page.
One way to create the simple input portlet:
1. Create a form against a table.
2. Create the form against the dual table
3. The next screen will be the typical buttons and one field called dummy. Delete all buttons and the field until you have nothing. Create one input field, "Search Criteria" and one button called, "View Results", or something like that.
4. One you have one field and one button, finish the page to save the results. Then edit the page.
5. The input field can be anything like a combo box or a straight input field.
6. The button's onclick event include callWindow(); //
7. Do not forget the "//" this comments out the doSubmit. You don't want to have the page sent to the server.
9. In the form text header section include the javascript function:
function callWindow()
var form = document.forms[0];
var search_criteria = form.elements["FORM_PT_PACKAGE_SEARCH.DEFAULT.SEARCH_CRITERIA.01"].value;
window.location = ("http://faweb.oraclecorp.com/servlet/page?_pageid=485,1051,497&_dad=faweb&_schema=FAWEB&a.search="+search_criteria);
</script>
The JavaScript will need to be tweaked for your specifics. But window.location calls intself with the appended &a.search="+search_criteria.
The report:
The SQL statement like usual in the where section here is an example:
lower(a.tracking_num||a.name_loc||a.sender) like lower('%'||(decode(faweb.wwpro_api_parameters.get_value('search','a'), null,'zzzzz',faweb.wwpro_api_parameters.get_value('search','a')))||'%')
What is important is:
wwpro_api_parameters.get_value('search','a')
This procedure (probably in portal schema) will read the URL and find anything that is a.search. If found, it will return the value assigned to a.seach. This value will then influence your select statement to give you the desired results. Lookup wwpro_api_parameters on google and you'll find http://portalstudio.oracle.com/pls/ops/docs/FOLDER/COMMUNITY/PDK/PLSQL/DOC/PLDOC_9026/wwpro_api_parameters.html
This documentation is great.
Hope this helps.
Tom