All posts by m.ogun

APEX Page Validation: a global check for special characters

Tech, , , , , , ,

I’ve been struggling with a long form which has tens of text areas on my APEX env.

At some point I needed to apply some restrictions on input fields. Basically to refrain any unwanted non-unicode characters to be inserted into table.

APEX has great Built-in restrictions and they work like a charm. However, it has only a few options. It didn’t help my case when I had to set a restriction to reject all characters but a-Z letters, all the numbers, spaces AND punctuations.

Perhaps there are easier ways to do that. Actually I’m sure there are easier ways to do that. But here is what I ‘ve done and feel free to use & feedback.

DECLARE
l_query VARCHAR2(100);
l_res clob;
v_out clob;
v_special NUMBER;
CURSOR cur_main IS
SELECT item
FROM (
SELECT item_name item 
FROM APEX_APPLICATION_PAGE_ITEMS 
WHERE application_id = :app_id AND page_id = :app_page_id 
AND LOWER(display_as) LIKE '%text%'
);
BEGIN
v_out:= '';
   FOR rec_main IN cur_main LOOP
   l_query := 'select v('''||NVL(rec_main.item, 'null')||''') from dual';
   EXECUTE IMMEDIATE l_query INTO l_res;
   v_out := v_out||l_res;
   END LOOP;
SELECT COUNT(1) 
INTO v_special 
FROM dual 
WHERE regexp_like(REPLACE(v_out, CHR(13)||CHR(10), '_carriegeReturn_'), 
                 '[^a-zA-Z0-9 .,:;?%&+-_]');
   IF v_special >0 THEN
   RETURN FALSE;
   ELSE
   RETURN TRUE;
  END IF;
END;

let’s unwrap it a bit:

  1. cur_main is the cursor where I get all my text-based input fields on the page.
  2. l_query holds my dynamic sql string.
  3. v_out is concatenated string which consists of each item’s value on the screen for current page. note that it won’t work based on the data from session state.
  4. I simply hate being have to use regular expressions. So I copied a simple syntax and modified for my scenario.

Rest are just true/false conditions.

In my case it’s a Page Validation Process. To pass this validation no rows should be returned. Otherwise it will raise the error message.

Cheers!

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Querying Active Directory Through Oracle

Science

The Fisherman DBA

It’s usually easy to tell when a muskie fisherman in another boat sees a good sized fish.  He’ll usually use the trolling motor to slowly move around a small area, picking it apart from different angles with his casts.  He may stay in an area of 100 square yards for a couple hours, trying to find the right presentation and angle to get the follower to bite.  Seeing a big fish follow your bait to the boat is exciting, but if you want to catch more of these followers, you need to be ready to change go at them with something different.  If bucktail gets them to follow lazily, try a jerkbait.  If casting from shallow water brings them in too late, try casting from the deep.

In my previous post, I showed how to query Active Directory from SQL Server.  This was nice and easy to do; since they’re…

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Getting and setting Apex page item values using $v(), $s(), $v2()

Science

Christoph's 2 Oracle Cents

The Apex JavaScript API has some very convenient functions to access the values of page items.

For example, if you wante to access the contents of a text field with JavaScript, would would need to reference it something like this:

$x("P2_TEXT_FIELD").value;

If the item you want to reference is a display only item, then the syntax changes:

x = $("#P2_DISPLAY_ONLY").text();

If you need to set the values of these items, the you need to use the varying syntax as well:

$x("P2_TEXT_FIELD").value = "Hello World!";

or

$("#P2_DISPLAY_ONLY").text("Hello World!");

Dealing with these various syntax constructs can be confusing. Fortunately the Apex JavaScript API makes this process much easier. To get page item values simply use $v(“<item_name>”):

x = $v("P2_TEXT_FIELD");
y = $v("P2_DISPLAY_ONLY");

To set the item values use:

$s("P2_TEXT_FIELD","Hello World!");
$s("P2_DISPLAY_ONLY","Hello World!");

See an example on my demo page.

The $v2() is handy if you need to access multiple items in…

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Viewing APEX Mail Log and Queue

Science

BrainStorage

Run these from APEX SQL Workshop:

SELECT * from APEX_MAIL_LOG ORDER BY LAST_UPDATED_ON DESC;

The next one will normally be empty, unless just prior to a queue purge (every 15 min?) or an error happened, then it will be retried 10X before finally being purged:

SELECT * from APEX_MAIL_QUEUE ORDER BY LAST_UPDATED_ON DESC;

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APEX 5.1 – Interactive Grids – Controlling Allowed Operations

Science

Johns Blog

In the last post I showed how easily you can enable an Interactive Grid for editing, however what if you want to only allow the user to edit certain rows?

Lets imagine a scenario – given the standard EMP table, I should only be able to change the salary of Employees who report to me (i.e. I can’t change the salary of an employee if they report to someone else).

So, let’s create an Interactive Grid with the following query –

Now, for the purposes of this example, given the hierarchy of the EMP table –

I’m going to “pretend” to be BLAKE – since BLAKE is the manager of 5 people.

If you look at the properties of the Interactive Grid you’ll see the “Allowed Row Operations Column” setting, this allows us to define a column in the query which will be used to define whether I can Update…

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