Hacking the APEX error page - Part 2!

Do you want to have highlighting for the tabular form column cells which have an error? Then you should read the rest of the posting!

I have enhanced the original Hacking the APEX error page code (the original posting has been updated) and created a new package ApexLib_Error which can be used to "raise" errors in a process or validation process when you process your tabular form values. The advantage of this package is that it allows you to provide the column and row number when you raise an error.

When the error message is displayed above the tabular form region, all the column cells which are related to an error are highlighted.

Check out the updated Enhanced Tabular Form with column cell highlighting example.

This new package enhances the existing Plug & play tabular form handling solution. You have different possibilities to use the new package. It has methods which can be used in validation process of type Function Returning Error Text and PL/SQL error. If you use it in a process you always have to use the raise* interface.

Let's do some examples:

Create a page validation with the following settings

• Identify the validation level: Page level validation
• Select a validation method: PL/SQL
• Select the type of PL/SQL validation you wish to create: Function Returning Error Text
• Error Display Location: On Error Page (it always has to be on error page!)
• Validation:

  
  BEGIN
      ApexLib_Error.addError
        ( pError      => '%label has to be between %0 and %1'
        , pColumnName => 'SALARY'
        , pRow        => 1
        , p0          => 1000
        , p1          => 5000
        );
      ApexLib_Error.addError
        ( pError   => 'SALARY_NOT_MATCHING'
        , pFieldId => 'f03'
        , pRow     => 5
        , p0       => 1000
        , p1       => 5000
        );
      RETURN ApexLib_Error.getErrorStack;
  END;
  

What does this code do?

It puts to errors onto an error stack, the first call identifies the column by the name (works only for updateable tabular forms) and the error text is hard coded, but with placeholders.
The second call uses a defined text message (Shared Components/Text Message) and identifies the column with the fxx syntax (in the case if you know to which HTML form item the column is mapped to). At the end of the validation process the error stack is returned to APEX. If no error is on the stack, nothing is returned. So this statement should always be the last statement in your validation process!

Let's do another example!

Create a page validation or process with the following settings

• Identify the validation level: Page level validation
• Select a validation method: PL/SQL
• Select the type of PL/SQL validation you wish to create: PL/SQL Error
• Error Display Location: On Error Page (it always has to be on error page!)
• Validation:

  
  BEGIN
      ApexLib_Error.addError
        ( pError      => '%label has to be between %0 and %1'
        , pColumnName => 'SALARY'
        , pRow        => 1
        , p0          => 1000
        , p1          => 5000
        );
      ApexLib_Error.addError
        ( pError   => 'SALARY_NOT_MATCHING'
        , pFieldId => 'f03'
        , pRow     => 5
        , p0       => 1000
        , p1       => 5000
        );
      ApexLib_Error.raiseErrorStack;
  END;
  

Same as the above example, the difference is at the end of the code. Instead of returning the error stack we raise it with an RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR so that APEX can capture it. This method of adding errors to the stack, allows you that you can also have multiple errors.

Another example

Same as above, but this time with the following code:

BEGIN
   ApexLib_Error.raiseError
     ( pError      => '%label has to be between %0 and %1'
     , pColumnName => 'SALARY'
     , pRow        => 1
     , p0          => 1000
     , p1          => 5000
     );
END;

This will immediately abort processing and the error is returned to APEX.

For a real world example check out the Plug & play tabular form handling posting.

The code has been tested with Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.0.

Where do I get the source code?

I have started a new SourceForge project, get the source code there.

Have questions? Don't hesitate to write me a note!

Update

Fixed an issue with Internet Explorer.