Comments, anyone? --Rob
foomanchoose_at_yahoo.com (Foo Man Choo SE) wrote in message news:<424fd2be.0108311041.7a2022b4_at_posting.google.com>...
> We have relatively involved HTML pages created using Dreamweaver.
> These pages contain a form with lots of tables within tables
> containing various Select lists and other form objects. We need to
> convert these into PL/SQL so that code could be added to generated
> dynamic content for the select lists, etc. Note that this is for
> Oracle 8.0.4 (OAS 4.0.8) on Solaris so the use of PL/SQL Server Pages
> (PSP) or other 8i functionality is out of the question.
>
> Well, we tried Webalchemy but it generates code containing several
> levels of nested function (i.e. htf.*) calls instead of separate htp.*
> calls. The following simplified example shows the result:
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> .
> .
> htp.tableRowOpen;
> htp.tableData( htf.tableOpen( cattributes => ' width="100%"' ) ||
> htf.tableRowOpen ||
> htf.tableData( htf.tableOpen( cattributes => '
> cellspacing="6"' ) ||
> htf.tableRowOpen( cattributes => ' bgcolor="#999999"' ) ||
> htf.tableData( htf.para ||
> htf.bold( '<FONT size="2">' ||
> 'Enter search text to select User:' ||
> '</FONT>') ||
> htf.formText( cname => 'tUser', csize => '35', cmaxlength =>
> '100', cattributes => ' onKeyUp="foo()"') ||
> htf.formSelectOpen( cname => 'lUser', nsize => '5') ||
> htf.formSelectOption( 'LIST LINE 1', cattributes => '
> value="LL1"') ||
> htf.formSelectOption( 'LIST LINE 2', cattributes => '
> value="LL2"') ||
> htf.formSelectOption( 'LIST LINE 3', cattributes => '
> value="LL3"') ||
> htf.formSelectClose ||
> htf.tableClose);
> htp.tableRowClose;
> .
> .
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> The problem with this is that it makes it a lot more difficult to
> insert PL/SQL code to, for example, generate the Select Option lines
> (e.g. LIST LINE 1).
>
> There appear to be four options:
>
> (1) Convert the Webalchemy output to change the htp.TableData()
> statements to htp.print("<TD>") and change the nested htf.* calls to
> serial htp.* calls (of course, not all would have to be changed this
> way). This would then permit the direct insertion of PL/SQL
> statements. PROBLEM: The required changes are very tedious and
> error-prone when dealing with large and complex HTML pages.
>
> (2) Leave the nesting as is but write own functions to return
> concatenated htf.* generated strings. In the above example, the three
> calls to htf.formSelectOption would be replaced by a single function
> call. This new function would query the database and generate a bunch
> of htf.formSelectOption calls whose output would be concatenated into
> a single return string. PROBLEM: Due to the large number of potential
> items in the Select list, it could exceed PL/SQL variable (or other)
> limitations. Limitations could include: number of parameters on
> function calls, size of parameters, nesting levels, etc. This is just
> a guess on my part--anyone know if there would be any problems taking
> this approach?
>
> (3) There appear to be at least two other conversion utilities which
> take the "dumb" approach of converting all HTML lines using
> htp.print() calls only. These utilities also provide rudimentary
> ASP/JSP/PSP style support of imbedded PL/SQL so updates can be based
> on single source. PROBLEM: Not sure other than it doesn't appear to
> be the Oracle recommended way. I'm also not sure if there are any
> performance implications of using only htp.print calls vs. the
> specific Oracle calls.
>
> (4) Webalchemy claims to support imbedded PL/SQL (within HTML) as
> well. However, running it against non-trivial HTML, results in
> incorrectly placed PL/SQL within nested htf.* calls. PROBLEM: Doesn't
> work.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions or approaches I may have overlooked?
> Thanks.
>
> --Rob
Received on Tue Sep 04 2001 - 08:58:00 CDT
