Synchronize between oracle forms and web browser

Question

I have an application built in Oracle web forms 10g. The users can access the form through a web browser. In the form, there is a button which calls the function web.show_documents(). The function opens an http page in another browser window. I want to be able to know if the new window is still open or it has been closed by the user, because I don't want him to be able to open that http address more than one at a time.

In other words, I would like to disable the button from the moment it was pressed until the new windows (that was created by that button press) is closed.

Is there a way to do it?

I know I can do it by sampling the database constantly, but I would like to avoid this solution because it is resource consuming.

Thanks.

Answer 1

This is a parent child window relationship in javascript. In Javascript a child window can be spawned by a parent window in that case the parent window is aware of the child window's name and can control its appearance and disappearance (open or close). However, in this case the parent window spawns the child window but not via javascript but using Oracle forms function web.show_documents.

Unfortunately, as of Oracle forms 10g there are no other web functions available for you to use (11g has web.javascript_eval_expr and web.javascript_eval_function which can be used to execute javascript).

For a solution- the easiest way would be to use _self target name in web.show_document instead of default _blank. This would make the webpage open in the same browser as of the forms session (in which case you would loose the forms session). You can alert the user notifying of this action saying that its done for consistency issues etc. and that the webpage will be opened in the same window as the forms.

The other option would be to disable the button altogether (as you said) once the webpage is open. However, a caveat to this would be that the user may close and re-open the form again in which case the button will be enabled (and the webpage may still be open).