ApEx + Javascript = Ajax

Understanding the syntax of javascript is a hard piece of work. I have to admit, that I just started to understand some small portions of it. However, many of the functions you need, have already been written by someone and they are available for a free download. A simple Google-Search will bring you there. But the real power of javascript in ApEx comes as a combination of it and PL/SQL, called Ajax. In my demo application, thera are several examples on how to utilize javascript and a page process on demand. It saves time and looks much better than refreshing a complete page. Here, you can find examples for:

- selecting a value using select list,
- populating multiple items using select list,
- cascading select and pop-up lists,
- creating a shopping cart,
- calculating date differences and
- using the famous Auto-Complete functionality.


Many of the examples are comming from Carl Backstrom. I just modified them a little bit. All the pages include a detailed description on how to set it up + the corresponding code.

Have fun!

Custom Search Form

Many questions in the ApEx Forum are related to the way of creating custom search forms and implementation of different page elements in query filtering. I created an example a while ago and had to point to it several times since. I think, this is worth of posting once again. You will find the mentioned example here. It shows how to implement a filtering functionality using four different page elements:

- text field
- drop-down list
- date picker and
- a checkbox

Checkbox Nightmare

There are only very few things in ApEx you could describe as critical. One of those, for sure, are checkboxes in tabular forms. I had a requirement to use those items in a updatable tabular form for setting simple flags like "Y" or "N", by clicking a checkbox. You will agree, this isn't something special if you think of oder programs operating on databases - evan Access has this functionality.

I spent several hours trying to solve that issue and finaly I had to give up. I asked Patrick Wolf, our expert for tabular forms for help. He was so kind to look into the application and correct it. And it worked. You can see the example here.

My request to the ApEx team:

Please solve this issue in one of the next releases. I can't really sell this problem to my customers. It is too trivial to be taken serious. Thanks.