​While working for many companies as an Oracle APEX Developer I have seen a number of clients that are still using Excel to communicate issues or enhancements in their APEX Apps, either because they are not allowed to use an external 3rd party software or because of the extra cost of them. 

Because of that I thought about creating an open-source APEX App called TestBoard, which as such will be inside the existing infrastructure, without adding any cost to it, helping project managers, developers and testers to communicate better, reporting bugs/enhancements, communicating resolutions, and testing the organization's APEX App Issues, in a central easy to use place.

Preview

The just released macOS Mojave main new feature is the ability to enable the Dark Mode. Which is not only great for working on low ambient light or long hours, but it is also a design trend. We can easily implement this capability on our APEX Applications defining two Theme Styles.


After adapting what Rodrigo Mesquita shared in his blog we can create a Dark and Light Mode Switch, so users can set the Theme Style independently, in a pre-configured way.

Global Colors - Header Accent
#323232


Global Colors - Body Accent
#39393A


Save your new ‘Dark’ Theme Style.
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For the new page template to be used, go on the pages that use the ‘Theme Default’ or ‘Standard’ template and change them to use the 'Custom Standard’ template that was just created.


Page - Appearance - Page Template - Change to ‘Custom Standard’ template.

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On Page 0 create two hidden items with the code below as its source.​

Identification - Name: P0_DARK_MODE_ID
Identification - Type: Hidden
Source - Type: SQL Query (return single value)
Source - SQL Query: 

Server-side Condition - Type - Item is NULL​

Server-side Condition - Item - P0_LIGHT_MODE_ID

​Create two true actions, Execute PL/SQL Code with the code below and a Submit Page action.

​Create two true actions, Execute PL/SQL Code with the code below and a Submit Page action.

​All is done, and the users of your application should now be able to switch to Dark or Light mode.

​Demo Application
You can login and see this solution accessing the SOTFUL - APEX Examples application.

SOTFUL - APEX Examples
https://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=sotful_examples
Username: [email protected]
Password: orclapex1

If you would like to login to the APEX Builder to see more details or export this demo application, please email me at [email protected] or send your info on the SOTFUL Contact Us page, and I will gladly provide your credentials.

Recently I was asked in two different projects to implement a simple way to print the current APEX page without requiring any client software or plugin, and also preserving the main appearance of the APEX page.
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There are several more sophisticated ways to implement a Print Friendly in Oracle APEX. This is the quickest solution I could think of, following the requirements mentioned above.
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The solution basically hides all page components that should not be printed and invokes the browser print, and then the user can choose to print or save the pdf file. Then all the page components that were hidden before are shown back to the user.

The implementation consist of Dynamic Actions to do the Hide, the window.print() JavaScript command to invoke the browser print and then Dynamic Actions to show the components back. An even quicker implementation is to place all the necessary JavaScript code in a single Dynamic Action (Click Print Button) that will do the Hides, Print and Shows.

​Below are the steps to implement this solution.

After creating your APEX Page with a Classic Report, create a button and name it Print. ​

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For the button to look like this

you have to define the Icon CSS Class as fa-print and change the Button Template to Text with Icon.


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Then you create a Dynamic Action in the Print Button, and define the When section to be Click - Button - Print.

​Then for the True you choose Execute JavaScript Code.

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​Following up in this article, we have this same solution implemented in pages with other types of Oracle APEX components. All the examples in this article are developed in the demo SOTFUL - APEX Examples application. Link and credentials are available below.


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​Additional step:
In your Interactive Report click on Attributes, then on Heading change
Fixed To     None

After creating your APEX Page with a Form create a button and name it Print.

​Then for the True you choose Execute JavaScript Code. In Settings - Code, you paste the following code below:

Note: This solution works on the Google Chrome browser. I am going to test it on the Internet Explorer/Edge browsers soon. For the Safari browser this code needs adjustment, since after the 1st Print the Hides no longer work. Feel free to post comments if you are able to adapt the code.

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You can login and see this solution accessing this demo APEX application.

SOTFUL - APEX Examples
https://pex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=sotful_examples
Username: [email protected]
Password: orclapex1

If you would like to login to the APEX Builder to see more details or export this demo application, please email me at [email protected] or send your info on the SOTFUL Contact Us page, and I will gladly provide your credentials.


In my next blog post I am going to share the details for implementing a collapsible, user friendly Report Filter, using declarative Dynamic Actions. I promise taking "no time" to publish this next one :)

Best,
Sandro

Following this Oracle APEX history recap, you can see below information about all Oracle APEX releases, since the beginning in 2004 when it was still called HTML DB. (Source: Wikipedia.com)

​It is so rewarding to recognize for how long the Oracle APEX product has survived and evolved already. That happened probably because the product itself is data driven and generated on the fly, running on top of a relational, mathematical, reliable, portable and secure data repository, the Oracle Database, which also happens to have been the best database in the market for all these years. Last but not least, Oracle APEX bet more than a decade ago in another winner, the web browser. That was before the internet was The Internet, and before Cloud was a technical term, instead referred by the applications, servers, databases, networks that it really is.

Until my next post.
Sandro