Can I pass an explicit cursor to a function/procedure for use in FOR loop?

Question

I have a procedure that performs some calculations on all records returned by a cursor. It looks a bit like this:

PROCEDURE do_calc(id table.id_column%TYPE)
         


        

Answer 1

I had a similar problem, where I had two cursors that needed to be processed the same way, so this is how I figured it out.

DECLARE
   --Define our own rowType
   TYPE employeeRowType IS RECORD (
      f_name           VARCHAR2(30),
      l_name            VARCHAR2(30));
   --Define our ref cursor type
   --If we didn't need our own rowType, we could have this: RETURN employees%ROWTYPE
   TYPE empcurtyp IS REF CURSOR RETURN employeeRowType;

   --Processes the cursors
   PROCEDURE process_emp_cv (emp_cv IN empcurtyp) IS
      person employeeRowType;
   BEGIN
      LOOP
         FETCH emp_cv INTO person;
         EXIT WHEN emp_cv%NOTFOUND;
         DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Name = ' || person.f_name ||
                          ' ' || person.l_name);
      END LOOP;
   END;

   --Defines the cursors
   PROCEDURE mainProcedure IS
    emp empcurtyp;
   BEGIN
      OPEN emp FOR SELECT first_name, last_name FROM employees WHERE salary > 50000;
      process_emp_cv(emp);
      CLOSE emp;

      OPEN emp FOR SELECT first_name, last_name FROM kuren WHERE first_name LIKE 'J%';
      process_emp_cv(emp);
      CLOSE emp;
   END;

BEGIN
  mainProcedure;
END;
/

You can also use this if you want to bulk collect your cursors. You just need to change your helper procedure process_emp_cv; the rest can stay the same.

Using BULK COLLECT

 --Processes the cursors
   PROCEDURE process_emp_cv (emp_cv IN empcurtyp) IS
      TYPE t_employeeRowTable IS TABLE OF employeeRowType;
      employeeTable   t_employeeRowTable;
   BEGIN
      LOOP
         FETCH emp_cv BULK COLLECT INTO employeeTable LIMIT 50;
         FOR indx IN 1 .. employeeTable.Count
         LOOP
            DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Name = ' || employeeTable(indx).f_name ||
                          ' ' || employeeTable(indx).l_name);
         END LOOP;
         EXIT WHEN emp_cv%NOTFOUND;
      END LOOP;
   END;