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First, the radio button is a good choice here because I don't want the user to pick more than one Fiscal Year at a time. To select more than one fiscal year at a time, checkboxes would have been the right choice. Checkboxes work pretty much the same as radio buttons.

In setting up radio buttons, JavaScript is really slick. If you give all the buttons the same name, JavaScript will make an array of them. Then you can just loop through the array looking for the selected button. Here's a look at the radio buttons I made:

Here's the code that created these buttons:

<tr>
<td>Fiscal Year 06-07</td><td><input type=radio name=fy checked=true>    </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Fiscal Year 05-06</td><td><input type=radio name=fy>    </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Fiscal Year 04-05</td><td><input type=radio name=fy>    </td>
</tr>

Three radio buttons with the name "fy". Notice that the first button has the added property "checked=true". This automatically selects the first radio button. In this way, I avoid having to handle the possible condition of no radio buttons checked.

So, the user has selected the Fiscal Year they want and clicked the "Prepare Report" button. We must figure out which radio button was selected, then run the report for the appropriate Fiscal Year. Here's the JavaScript function that makes it happen:

function pickEd(){
var theone=0;
for (i=0;i<document.detail_form.fy.length;i++){
if (document.detail_form.fy[i].checked==true){
theone = i;
break; //exit for loop, as target acquired.
}

}
location.href = "http://[yourDADinfohere]/report_tools_equip.expend?pfy="+theone;

}

I obtained the guts of this function from here. This is the JavaScript Kit Reference page, and it is a great JavaScript resource.

What this function does is loop through the radio buttons until it finds the one that is checked, then calls a PL/SQL procedure, passing a 0,1, or 2 depending on which radio button was selected. My PL/SQL procedure then examines the value passed in and sets the date range. I did it like this (pfy is the value passed):

if(pfy = '0') then
vlodate := '01-JUL-06';
vhidate := '30-JUN-07';
elsif(pfy = '1') then
vlodate := '01-JUL-05';
vhidate := '30-JUN-06';
else
vlodate := '01-JUL-04';
vhidate := '30-JUN-05';
end if;

Here's something interesting - you can use these variable names in your procedure cursors. So a cursor could look like this:

select xxxxx from table.table
where condition
and item_date between vlodate and vhidate;

This works. Go ahead and set up your report as needed. Here's a sample of my report's output:

There you have it. Another useful JavaScript - PL/SQL combination.

Here's a comment from Summer:

I've created a
procedure that ads the javascript function to your code:

<pre>procedure getradio is
begin
htp.p('
<script language="javascript">
function getCheckedValue(radioObj) {
if(!radioObj)
return "";
var radioLength = radioObj.length;
if(radioLength == undefined)
if(radioObj.checked)
return radioObj.value;
else
return "";
for(var i = 0; i < radioLength; i++) {
if(radioObj[i].checked) {
return radioObj[i].value;
}
}
return "";
}
<script>');
end getradio;</pre>