Within a PL/SQL procedure, wrap a query or refcursor in HTML table

Question

It seems really easy if you are using SQL*Plus to use

SQL> set markup html on;

and get some lovely results to the SQL*Plus window. we

Answer 1

From posting over On the DBA site I got close to the answer that I was looking for. Tom Kyte has a great blog post with a function that does exactly what I was hoping for. In short here is what I implemented:

I created a function that took a sys_refcursor as a variable:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION fncRefCursor2HTML(rf SYS_REFCURSOR)  RETURN CLOB
IS
    lRetVal      CLOB;
    lHTMLOutput  XMLType; 
    lXSL         CLOB;
    lXMLData     XMLType;

    lContext     DBMS_XMLGEN.CTXHANDLE;
BEGIN
    -- get a handle on the ref cursor --
    lContext := DBMS_XMLGEN.NEWCONTEXT(rf);
    -- setNullHandling to 1 (or 2) to allow null columns to be displayed --
    DBMS_XMLGEN.setNullHandling(lContext,1);
    -- create XML from ref cursor --
    lXMLData := DBMS_XMLGEN.GETXMLTYPE(lContext,DBMS_XMLGEN.NONE);

    -- this is a generic XSL for Oracle's default XML row and rowset tags --
    -- " " is a non-breaking space --
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[ ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[ ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[ ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[  ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[   ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[     ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[      ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[       ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[      ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[     ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[     ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[      ]';    
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[       ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[        ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[       ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[      ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[     ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[   ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[  ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[ ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[ ]';
    lXSL := lXSL || q'[]';

    -- XSL transformation to convert XML to HTML --
    lHTMLOutput := lXMLData.transform(XMLType(lXSL));
    -- convert XMLType to Clob --
    lRetVal := lHTMLOutput.getClobVal();

    RETURN lRetVal;
END;

Then to test it in a Test window in PL/SQL Developer

declare 
  l_cursor sys_refcursor;
begin
  open l_cursor for select * from employees;
  :x:= fncRefCursor2HTML(l_cursor);
  close l_cursor;  
end;

This is something that I have been hoping to find for a long time. THANKS Tom Kyte!