Returning a Table over OCI8 from Oracle Stored Procedure

Question

I am connecting to Oracle via OCI8.

I have a stored procedure:

  PROCEDURE ocigetaccounts(accounts OUT SYS_REFCURSOR)
  IS BEGIN
  OPEN accounts FOR
        SELECT * FROM tbaccounts;
  END ocigetaccounts;

And I am attempting to return it to PHP using OCI:

$sqlString = 'BEGIN accounts.ocigetaccounts(:accounts); END;';
oci_bind_by_name($statement, ':accounts', $result, -1);
    echo $result;

(The rest of the required php-side OCI is in place.)

The error I am getting is:

Warning: oci_execute(): ORA-06550: line 1, column 7: PLS-00306: wrong number or types of arguments in call to 'OCIGETACCOUNTS'

How can I get $result to container the table resource

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, $result will contain the resource you are after. The error you are getting is because the cursor is not defined as a type cursor. You have to explicitly define $result as a cursor

$result = oci_new_cursor( $dbci );

If $result is returned, it will be returned as a resource and you should handle it just as you would handle a any other returned resource.

For your example (with $dbci being your connection resource):

$sqlString = 'BEGIN accounts.ocigetaccounts(:accounts); END;';

$stmt = oci_parse ( $dbci, $sqlString );
//Declare cursor
$result = oci_new_cursor( $dbci );

//Bind cursor
oci_bind_by_name ( $stmt, ':accounts', $result, -1, OCI_B_CURSOR);

//Execute query
if (oci_execute ( $stmt )) {
    //Execute cursor
    oci_execute($result);  //Or you can return the cursor.
}

This is how we handle cursors returned from the database. Hope this solves the problem

Answer 2

There are issues with PHP and REFCURSORS. See this excellent blog article for a complete explanation, and workaround:

http://blogs.oracle.com/opal/entry/converting_ref_cursor_to_pipe

Hope that helps.