Unit test, how to test a function which returns a PL/SQL table.

Question

I've got the following type definition:
create or replace type method_tbl as table of varchar2(255);
/I've got the following function
function abc(p_param1 in varchar2) return method_tbl;When I create a unit test for this I am not able to specify what the table should contain on return of the function, all I can see is an empty table. Which is off course one of the unit tests. But I also want to test where the table that is returned contains a number of rows.
Is there something that I'm missing?
Typically the function is called like this:
select * from table(abc('a'));Thanks,
Ronald

Answer 1

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When I create a unit test for this I am not able to specify what the table should contain on return of the function, all I can see is an empty table. Which is off course one of the unit tests. But I also want to test where the table that is returned contains a number of rows.
Is there something that I'm missing?
>
You will have to create a collection that represents the result set and then compare that to the actual result set.
Assuming tables A and B you would typically have to do
1. SELECT * FROM A MINUS SELECT * FROM B -- what is in A that is NOT in B
2. SELECT * FROM B MINUS SELECT * FROM A -- what is in B that is NOT in A
You could combine those two queries into one with a UNION ALL but since the results are tables and the comparison is more complex it is common to write a function to determine the comparison result.
Here is sample code that shows how to create an expected result collection.
DECLARE
expectedItemList sys.OdciVarchar2List;
functionItemList sys.OdciVarchar2List;
newItemList sys.OdciVarchar2List;
expectedCount INTEGER;
countFunctionItemList INTEGER;
BEGIN
expectedItemList := sys.OdciVarchar2List('car','apple','orange','banana','kiwi');
expectedCount := 5; -- or query to count them
functionItemList := sys.OdciVarchar2List('car','apple','orange','peanut');
-- use your function to get the records
-- select * from myFunctino BULK COLLECT INTO functionItemList
IF functionItemList.count != expectedCount THEN
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Count is ' || functionItemList.count || ' but should be ' || expectedCount);
END IF;
END;
Count is 4 but should be 5If the collections are the same type you can use the MULTISET operators.
See Solomon's reply in this thread for how to use the MULTISET operators on collections.
PLS-00306: wrong number or type of argument in call to 'MULTISET_UNION_ALL'
See MultisetOperators in the SQL Reference doc
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B13789_01/server.101/b10759/operators006.htm
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Multiset operators combine the results of two nested tables into a single nested table.