APEX

Published: Wednesday, 14 December 2016 22:53 | Written by Stefan | Print | Email | Hits: 40902

yesno switch On our mobile phones we are used to have very convenient widgets to ease the handling of mobile applications. One of these widgets is a flipswitch which is perfect to show "two-state" values. For this kind of widget here is my new APEX plugin. This kind of widget will come "out of the box" with APEX 5.1 but if you will have it earlier, here it is!

To see how it works, visit my ITSTAR APEX Demo Pages, to download the plugin, >> click here <<

How to create an APEX Plugin

Published: Saturday, 13 September 2014 21:15 | Written by Stefan | Print | Email | Hits: 86019

A perfect case study for the development of APEX Plugins is the integration of Google Maps into APEX. The Plugin we will develop here should not only show a part of a map, it should also provide the ability to place multiple markers on the map. The positions of the markers will be passed as a string which contains a JSON object. All the other information will come from settings of the Plugin itself. In the most cases, the GPS position we want to place on the map, came out of the database. Therefor we need a PL/SQL Function which converts this data into a JSON string. All the required functions are described in this article. To see a Demo of the Plugin, click here!

Basics

Since version 4.0 it is possible to extend the functionality of APEX with the so-called "Plugins". The plugins are used in the APEX Application Builder like ordinary components (eg. items, buttons, forms, etc.). According to there use, Plugins are separated in the following types:

Region Type Plugins
Item Type Plugins
Dynamic Action Plugins
Process Type Plugins

Plugins are ideal tools to modularize and adapt APEX applications to individual needs. An APEX Plugin is characterized by the fact that all files and programs that are necessary for the plugin are managed together in one place. These are PL/SQL-Programs and/or JavaScript code as well as CSS and image files. This makes it possible to reuse a Plugin and so it is quite easy to install it in another APEX environment.