PL/SQL how to return a User-Defined Record from create or replace function - oracle

Question

I'm trying to learn PL/SQL
and I do not seem to understand how I can create a function and let it return a Record
I am trying to do something like this:
create or replace FUNCTION getMovie(movieID number)
RETURN record IS titleAndYear record(title varchar(100), production_Year number);
BEGIN
if (titleAndYear is null) then
titleAndYear:= MovieTitleAndYear('',0);
end if;
select TITLE ,YEAR into titleAndYear.title ,titleAndYear.production_Year from movie where MOVIE_ID = movieID;
return titleAndYear;
END;
I know this is not working but I do not know why ?
EDIT 1:
I have also Tried this:
create or replace TYPE MovieTitleAndYear is OBJECT(title varchar(100), production_Year number);
/
create or replace FUNCTION getMovie(movieID number)
RETURN MovieTitleAndYear IS titleAndYear MovieTitleAndYear;
BEGIN
if (titleAndYear is null) then
titleAndYear:= MovieTitleAndYear('',0);
end if;
select TITLE ,YEAR into titleAndYear.title ,titleAndYear.production_Year from movie where MOVIE_ID = movieID;
return titleAndYear;
END;
But then the result when i run this statement:
select
GETMOVIE(
2540943
) from dual;
becomes this
GETMOVIE(2540943)
1 [DB_036.MOVIETITLEANDYEAR]
instead of two colums title and productionyear.

Answer 1

Your first example using a record won't work. For a start, a function cannot return a value of a type that is only declared inside the function. You can try moving the record type declaration to a package, but even if you then got the function to compile, running the query select getMovie(2540943) from dual would return an ORA-00902 invalid datatype error.
So I would recommend that you use a type instead.
If you are using a type, then to get the movie and year separately, you need to access the fields within the type individually, for example:
select getMovie(2540943).title, getMovie(2540943).production_year from dual
Alternatively, you can use a subquery if you want to avoid calling getMovie() twice:
select x.movie_info.title, x.movie_info.production_year from (select getMovie(2540943) as movie_info from dual) x;
Note that we need to use an alias for the subquery. The following will give an ORA-00904: "MOVIE_INFO"."PRODUCTION_YEAR": invalid identifier error:
select movie_info.title, movie_info.production_year from (select getMovie(2540943) as movie_info from dual);
The problem here is that Oracle is looking for a table movie_info in the query, but it can't find one. It doesn't realise that movie_info is actually a column. If we introduce the alias x, Oracle then realises that x.movie_info is a column and so x.movie_info.title is a field within a type in the column.

Answer 2

Try this approach. I think your answer lies within this snippet. Let
me know if this helps.
--Create object type
CREATE OR REPLACE type av_obj_test
IS
object
(
col1 VARCHAR2(100),
col2 VARCHAR2(100) );
--C reate table type
CREATE OR REPLACE type av_ntt_test
IS
TABLE OF av_obj_test;
--Createfunction
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION AV_RECORD RETURN
AV_NTT_TEST
AS
av_record av_ntt_test;
BEGIN
NULL;
SELECT av_obj_test(LEVEL,'av'||LEVEL) BULK COLLECT INTO av_record FROM DUAL
CONNECT BY LEVEL < 10;
RETURN av_record;
END;
--Calling function
SELECT * FROM TABLE(AV_RECORD);
--------------------------------OUTPUT-------------------------------------
COL1 COL2
1 av1
2 av2
3 av3
4 av4
5 av5
6 av6
7 av7
8 av8
9 av9
-------------------------------OUTPUT----------------------------------------