ApEx Item - Workarround

There may be some cases where you need to use apex_item (although, Patrick Wolf doesn't think so). The downside of that approach is:

1. your Query looks awkward,

2. you can't sort on your columns,

3. you can't display your column totals

In case you didn't know, you may use a trick to work around that problem:

a) crate a normal query like this:

SELECT LPAD (ROWNUM, 4, 0) ROW_NUM, deptno, empno, ename, 
       sal, comm
  FROM emp

b) In the HTML expression of your columns put the following for each column accordingly:

<input id="f03_#ROW_NUM#" type="text" style="text-align: right;" 
value="#EMPNO#" maxlength="4" size="4" name="f03"/>

c) You may use the items in your custom update process and in your javascript the same way you do when you use apex_item or the wizard generated table.

Now, you may create column totals and sort on such created items. And your SQL query looks much better.

As always, there is a proof of concept in my Demo Application on this page http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=31517:168.

By the way. Around 100 people from all over the globe asked and received a personal account for the Demo Application. If you are also interested to look behind the curtains, please feel free to send me an email with your contact details.