Book Image

Oracle APEX Cookbook : Second Edition

Book Image

Oracle APEX Cookbook : Second Edition

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Oracle APEX Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Introduction


In APEX 4.0, Oracle introduced the plug-in feature. A plug-in is an extension to the existing functionality of APEX. The idea behind plug-ins is to make life easier for developers. Plug-ins are reusable, and can be exported and imported. In this way it is possible to create a functionality which is available to all APEX developers. And installing and using them without the need of having a knowledge of what's inside the plug-in.

APEX translates settings from the APEX builder to HTML and JavaScript. For example, if you created a text item in the APEX builder, APEX converts this to the following code (simplified):

<input type="text" id="P12_NAME" name="P12_NAME" value="your name">

When you create an item type plug-in, you actually take over this conversion task of APEX, and you generate the HTML and JavaScript code yourself by using PL/SQL procedures. That offers a lot of flexibility because now you can make this code generic, so that it can be used for more items.

The same...