Out of the box APEX provides a number of useful, declarative, good looking navigation options. There is the side navigation menu tree and the top navigation menu bar, top navigation tabs, and new in release 20.1 top navigation mega menu. In this series of articles I will be discussing some advanced use cases primarily related to side navigation. These are based on customer requests and my own musings. The sample app for part 1 was created with the upcoming 20.1 APEX release but the techniques should work on previous releases. On apex.oracle.com there is currently a pre-release of 20.1 where yo ..read more

Yay APEX 22.1 is released! There are plenty of great new features. One of my favorites is the Region Sort Page Item. Something that doesn’t get a lot of attention is new functionality in the APIs. So I have created a demo app that shows what can be done with some of these new JavaScript APIs. If you emphasize the “low” in low-code then this article may not be for you. On the other hand if you like to know how a little code can enable exceptional use cases read on. The raw info on what is new for APIs can be found in the release notes and the details can be found in the JavaScript API Referenc ..read more

The editable Interactive Grid is intended to edit data that is already valid. This is no different from an APEX form page. The form or grid displays valid data for the user to enter/edit and validation is done when the page is submitted. A few times I have seen people ask about a different use case where the data comes from some external source and may not be valid. This came up again recently with a customer and it motivated me to work up a sample app to demonstrate some possible solutions. If this use case interests you or even if you just want to learn more about client side validation and ..read more

At Kscope 19 in Seattle and APEX Connect in Bonn I presented a beginners session on interactive grid where I demonstrated an app that gives a guided tour of the interactive grid features. As promised I’m making the app available. It uses the same data as the Sample Interactive Grids app so make sure that is installed first. Then download the Interactive Grid Tour. If you are new to interactive grid this app is a good introduction to what it can do. It takes a different approach compared to the Sample Interactive Grids app in that it guides you through just about all of the built-in capabilitie ..read more

It shouldn’t be long now before the next release of Oracle APEX, 21.2, is available on apex.oracle.com. There will be plenty of buzz around the big new features in 21.2 but here I’ll introduce some new client side APIs and along the way I’ll mention some of the new or recent features the APIs apply to. This release has the biggest set of additions to the JavaScript APIs since 19.1 when the new JSDoc based API documentation became official. There is enough cool new stuff that it won’t all fit in one blog so Stefan Dobre is going to tell you about some of it. When you scan the 21.2 JavaScript AP ..read more

At a recent Oracle APEX Offices Hours I presented (@18:38) the new 20.2 features of Faceted Search. I showed the new facet value charts and the new facet control types, input field and groups of single checkboxes. I also showed how the faceted search region works with the new Charts region. The next day I got a question from an internal customer about how to put the facet charts dashboard in a collapsible region. This use case makes a lot of sense but simply using the collapsible region template isn’t enough to make it work. This plus a few other internal questions got me thinking that it was ..read more

In APEX 20.2 you will see in the help text for a few properties “Additional Information… Supports Template Directives”. Here I will explain all about this new functionality, the motivation, where to find it, how it can be used, where it may be going, and hopefully clear up and establish some terminology. A different kind of template. Background APEX has always had (at least as far back as my familiarity with APEX goes) something called templates. You can find all the templates under shared components. There are a number of kinds: Page, Button, Region, and Report to name a few and also Email Te ..read more

This is the third and final article in the navigation menu experiments series. Check out parts 1 and 2. In this experiment the navigation menu dynamically changes between side and top positions. As in parts 1 and 2 this sample app was created using the upcoming 20.1 APEX release but the techniques should work on previous releases. On apex.oracle.com there is currently a pre-release of 20.1 where you can try out the app (enter any username). You can also download the app and import it into your own workspace on apex.oracle.com or your own 20.1 instance once available. This third experiment was ..read more

This is part 2 in a series of articles exploring navigation techniques in Oracle Application Express. Check out part 1 first if you missed it. Here I will show how to dynamically fetch new child nodes in the navigation tree on-demand. The sample app for part 2 was created with the upcoming 20.1 APEX release but the techniques should work on previous releases. On apex.oracle.com there is currently a pre-release of 20.1 where you can try out the app (enter any username). You can also download the app and import it into your own workspace on apex.oracle.com or your own 20.1 instance once availabl ..read more

I picked a new WordPress theme with better accessibility while still responsive. Hope it helps ..read more