The Interactive Reports in Oracle Application Express (APEX) are extremely useful. Sometimes you need to tweak their styling but there are limited ways to do that from the interface. So how can you do it?

The styling of an interactive report is set using the default stylesheet (something like apex_3_1.css).

Within the APEX APEX_UTIL package there are a couple of useful procedures for setting and resetting Interactive Report filters. This allows you to manipulate IR filters programmatically within PLSQL.

For some reason these packages are not included in the official APEX API documentation so I have included some details below :

When you delete records from a record set in Oracle Application Express using a Delete button it is best to give the user a chance to cancel.

This can be easily achieved using a JavaScript popup confirmation dialog box.

The Oracle Application Express URL contains a number of parameters. These parameters are documented but the summary below is quick guide to get you started.

A typical URL takes the form :

http://www.examplesite.com/pls/apex/f?p=1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9

In order to add debug messages to APEX pages you can use the following syntax :

wwv_flow.debug('This is my debug message');

You can use PLSQL variables or APEX page items :

wwv_flow.debug('### The value of P1_TEST_ITEM is ' || :P1_TEST_ITEM);

The three ###s make the debug message stand out from the numerous other APEX messages.

In order to send emails from Oracle APEX you can use the APEX_MAIL API.

You can send plain text or HTML emails while defining the sender, recipients and bccs.

Note : The package is built using the Oracle supplied UTL_SMTP package so the UTL_SMTP package must be installed and functioning in order to use APEX_MAIL.