Thursday 31 January 2008

Report with Filtering

As far as I know, something similar should be a part of the ApEx version 3.1. Nevertheless, I wanted to know if I can do something like that myself. The requirement is:

1. a report containing a search field for each column (textfield, select list or other)

2. after typing in the select criteria, the report should filter the results,

3. no page submit required.

Here is the result of what I came up with. It is quite easy (and dirty). There, you will also find the full code I used, except of the DHTML Region Pull. That one, you can find in the Carl's Demo Application.



The downsides of this example:

a) the code is not generic - you got to do that yourself ;)

b) the sorting on the column headers doesn't work in that particular example - I avoided that since it would mean a much more work.

Maybe, you will find it usefull and apply it on one or the other case.




Tuesday 22 January 2008

ApEx Training

This posting is targeting the German ApEx comunity and is therefor posted in German language:

Wie Sie möglicherweise schon gehört haben, organisieren Patrick, Dietmar und ich einen ApEx Training im März dieses Jahres. Dieses Training heisst "Fortgeschrittene Techniken aus der Praxis". Das bedeutet natürlich nicht, dass diejenigen, die sich anmelden wollen, fortgeschrittene Kentnisse mitbringen müssen. Vielmehr ist unser Ziel, eine Schulung zu organisieren, die stärker praxisorientiert ist als wir das ansonsten kennen. Wir werden viele wichtige Themen ansprechen - vom Anwendungskonzept, über Layout bis zu den ganz modernen Themen wie z.B. Ajax. Interesse? Ueber dieses Link geht es zu den Infos und zur Anmeldung

http://www.opal-consulting.de


Wir freuen uns Sie begruessen zu duerfen!


Tabular form - updating a value in another column Vol. 2

If you need to deal with a tabular form created by the wizard, you will need to use a slightly different approach. I discussed that topic yesterday evening with Patrick Wolf. The difference to the first approach you can find here:

ApEx Demo Appication - Javascript Set Display Item II
.

The full explanation and the code are there as well. Basically, what you need to change is the way you get the rownum. Using $x(this).id will give you the current item id. Substr(4) will give you the last four digits of it (thanks Patrick) and putting that four digits in the Number() function gives you the row number (ROWNUM). You could use that value to loop through the table and update other values, not corresponding to that particular row.






Access to my Workspace

My workspace dkubicek and my ApEx Demo Application on apex.oracle.com still show around 3000 page clicks per day in average. Google Analytics says there are up to 300 visitors with an average time on site of 11 minutes. 30% of the visitors are visiting the site for the first time.

Yesterday, I changed the login for the guest user in my workspace. In the past I was allowing access to my workspace with the same login as well. However, this showed to be a bad practice. Once, the application was deleted by someone and I needed my backup to restore it. Now, I require your email and your full name to give you your own access. But, I still need to ask you not to do any changes and especially not to install other applications in my workspace.



If you want an access to the workspace where the ApEx Demo Application is stored, please send me your email with your contact details and I will respond to you with a username and a password.



 




Monday 21 January 2008

Tabular form - updating a value in another column Vol. 1

Just recently, I had a requirement from one of my customers to create a kind of a form similar to excel, where user could update particular columns and this update will be applied (calculated) to the other columns, before the form is submitted.

First, I tried the solution posted in the forum, where you need to loop through a table using html_CascadeUpTill and and then find the row position. In some constelations this didn't work (vertical report template). I decided to look for alternate solutions and found out that this can be done in a more transparent way by simply using apex_item package and the ROWNUM. Also, the javascript code you need to do the update is much more transparent and much easier to debug. I also created a validation process to make sure only numbers are entered and an update statement for saving the changes to the corresponding table.

If you want to see a working example, go to my ApEx Demo Appication. There, you will find the full code.






Thursday 10 January 2008

ApEx Stammtisch - ApEx Meeting in Siegburg

Dietmar and myself would like to establish regular meetings for the ApEx community in Germany. Therefor, we will start with our first meeting ("Stammtisch" in German) in Siegburg, on January 15, 2008. The target is to exchange the experience with other colleagues from the ApEx community. Further details you can find here:

http://www.opal-consulting.de

You are welcome to join us,

Denes

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Es war Dietmars Idee, einen sog. ApEx Stammtisch zu etablieren! Er hat sie am Ende auch umgesetzt (Danke Dietmar!). Wir starten am 15.01.2008 in Siegburg. Der Plan ist diese Runde in regelmässigen Abständen zu organisieren, um die Erfahrungen aus der ApEx-Welt auszutauschen. Die Anmeldung zum Stammtisch findet ihr hier:

http://www.opal-consulting.de

Wir freuen uns auf ein Kennenlernen und bis zum nächsten Dienstag.

Denes


Monday 7 January 2008

Create Virtual Tables Vol.2

Every once in a while a question similar to this one will appear in the forum. The problem is always the same: "how to create a lot of data based on very few records?". Today, one new variation of a puzzle followed. It took me arround half an hour in order to create a demo page, giving an idea on how to solve the problem. Of course, you need much more for a working version of an application.





The example in my demo application


http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=31517:158


is related to one of the examples from the past


http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=31517:83


which I already blogged about here


http://deneskubicek.blogspot.com/2007/05/create-pseudo-tables.html


Still, this requirement is somewhat new and different. It is worth of looking into it.




Export to Excel - 1500 downloads

The package I created for downloading ApEx reports into Excel (instead of .csv) has now been available for about ten months. Some time after releasing the package I started to count the downloads. There have been more than 1500 downloads so far. There are two versions of the package - one for ApEx and one for XE. The ApEx Package has been downloaded around 1200 times and the XE version arround 300 times. I have to admit I hardly touched the package since the first release. However, it could be improved a lot to cover some functionalities .csv offers. I already talked to Patrick Wolf to put some common efforts into the improvement of the package in the near future. I would also like to thank to Bernhard Kahles and Martin Wibbing for their contributions to the improvments in the past, which helped to overcome some version related limitations.



Here is the link to the package once again.

http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=31517:108