Oracle Apex 4.0 Cookbook  (English, Paperback, Zoest Michel Van)

Over 80 great recipes to develop and deploy fast, secure, and modern web applications with Oracle Application Express 4.0

• Create feature-rich web applications in APEX 4.0
• Integrate third-party applications like Google Maps into APEX by using web services
• Enhance APEX applications by using stylesheets, Plug-ins, Dynamic Actions, AJAX, JavaScript, BI Publisher, and jQuery
• Hands-on examples to make the most out of the possibilities that APEX has to offer
• Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible

In Detail
Oracle Application Express 4.0 is a rapid web application development tool that works with the Oracle database. Using features like Plug-ins and Dynamic Actions, APEX helps you build applications with the latest techniques in AJAX and JavaScript.

The Oracle Application Express 4.0 Cookbook shows you recipes to develop and deploy reliable, modern web applications using only a web browser and limited programming experience.

With recipes covering many different topics, it will show you how to use the many features of APEX 4.0.

You will learn how to create simple form and report pages and how to enhance the look of your applications by using stylesheets. You will see how you can integrate things such as Tag Clouds, Google Maps, web services, and much more in your applications. Using Plug-ins, Dynamic Actions, BI Publisher, translations and Websheets, you will be able to enhance your applications to a new level in APEX.

This book will show you how to be Agile in the development of your web applications by using Team Development, debugging, and third-party tools.

After reading this book, you will be able to create feature-rich web applications in Application Express 4.0 with ease and confidence.

A practical reference guide with over 70 recipes for every APEX developer

What you will learn from this book

• Create feature-rich web applications in APEX 4.0
• Integrate third-party applications like Google Maps into APEX by using web services
• Enhance APEX applications by using style sheets, Plug-ins, Dynamic Actions, AJAX, JavaScript, BI Publisher, and jQuery
• Hands-on examples to make the most out of the possibilities that APEX has to offer
• Find out about the APEX Dictionary, Translations, Web sheets, and the new Application Builder
• Make the development process easier by using debugging
• Deploy APEX applications using the APEX Listener and Apache
• Use Team Development to make APEX projects lean and Agile

Approach

As a cookbook, this book enables you to create APEX web applications and to implement features with immediately usable recipes that unleash the powerful functionality of Oracle APEX 4.0. Each recipe is presented as a separate, standalone entity and reading of other prior recipes is not required.

It can be seen as a reference and a practical guide to APEX development.

Who this book is written for
This book is aimed both at developers new to the APEX environment and at intermediate developers. More advanced developers will also gain from the information at hand.

If you are new to APEX you will find recipes to start development. If you are an experienced user you will find ways to work smarter and more easily with APEX and enhance your applications.

A little knowledge of PL/SQL, HTML and JavaScript is assumed.

About the Author
Michel van Zoest is a consultant with more than 10 years of experience in building (web) applications using Oracle technology like Oracle (web) Forms, Oracle Designer, MOD_PLSQL, ADF, and APEX.

Michel is one of the first Oracle Application Express Developer Certified Experts in the world and has worked on APEX projects for many different customers.

Marcel van der Plas started his career in 1995. As from the beginning he learned to work with Oracle Forms 4.5, Oracle Reports 2.5 and Oracle Designer 1.3.2. With these tools he has worked on many projects. Later on, he became interested in webdevelopment, first with PHP and MySQL, and later with APEX.

Table of Contents
Preface

Chapter 1: Creating a Basic APEX Application

• Introduction
• Creating an APEX 4.0 application
• Creating a simple form page
• Creating a simple report
• Implementing an interactive report
• Creating a chart
• Creating a map chart
• Creating a navigation bar
• Creating a list of values
• Including different item types
• Protecting a page using an authorization scheme
• Securing an application with Authentication
• Control the display of regions and items with Dynamic Actions
• Creating a computation
• Creating an automated row fetch with a page process
• Putting some validation in a form
• Creating a report with PL/SQL Dynamic Content

Chapter 2: Themes and Templates

• Introduction
• Creating your own theme
• Importing a theme
• Creating a custom template
• Including images in your application
• Referencing CSS classes in your application
• Controlling the layout

Chapter 3: Extending APEX

• Introduction
• Adding JavaScript code to your application
• Creating a tag cloud with AJAX
• Creating visual effects with JavaScript libraries
• Enhancing your application with the Google API
• Including Google maps
• Embedding multimedia objects in your application
• Creating a region selector
• Sending mail via APEX
• Uploading and downloading files
• Calling APEX from an Oracle Form

Chapter 4: Creating web sheet Applications

• Introduction
• Creating a web sheet application
• Creating a page in a web sheet
• Adding a navigation section to a page
• Implementing a datagrid
• Allowing multiple users access to a web sheet
• Creating an enhanced datagrid from a spreadsheet

Chapter 5: APEX Plug-ins

• Introduction
• Creating an item type plug-in
• Creating a region type plug-in
• Creating a dynamic action plug-in
• Creating a process type plug-in

Chapter 6: Creating Multilingual APEX Applications

• Introduction
• Creating a translatable application
• Using XLIFF files
• Switching languages
• Translating data in an application

Chapter 7: APEX APIs

• Introduction
• Updating a table with the hidden primary key
• Reading a checkbox programmatically
• Creating help functionality with apex_application.help
• Counting clicks with apex_util.count_click
• Setting default item settings with apex_ui_default_update
• Creating a background process with apex_plsql_job

Chapter 8: Using Webservices

• Introduction
• Creating a SOAP web service reference
• Creating a REST web service reference
• Building a page on a web service reference

Chapter 9: Publishing from APEX

• Introduction
• Exporting to a comma separated file
• Creating a PDF report
• Creating a report query
• Creating a report layout using Oracle BI Publisher
• Linking the report layout to the report query
• Calling a report from a page

Chapter 10: APEX Environment

• Introduction
• Setting up a development environment using subscriptions
• Debugging an APEX application
• Debugging an APEX application remotely
• Deploying an application with SQL Developer
• Setting up version control with APEX and SVN
• Setting up a production environment using an Apache proxy
• Setting up the APEX Listener on Weblogic

Chapter 11: APEX Administration

• Introduction
• Creating a workspace manually
• Creating a workspace by request
• Creating a user
• Adding a schema to your workspace
• Setting a system message
• Setting a workspace announcement
• Setting news items on the home page
• Creating a site-specific task list
• Creating a public theme
• Locking a workspace

Chapter 12: Team Development

• Introduction
• Creating a list of features
• Creating and assigning To-do's
• Keeping track of bugs in the Bug tracker
• Creating Milestones
• Using Feedback
• Using Follow-ups

Index