Carl Backstrom's Blog

Well I was at Web2.0 Expo last week and saw many recurring themes with building and deploying applications. Most of which , being biased as I am , I think Application Express is well suited for.

Two of the most often heard were SaaS and Cloud Computing (the cloud!!!) and was wondering if there was any interest of an APEX offering in those contexts.

So being the type of person I am ,I want to hear straight from the people and put this post here on the OTN forums.

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=650092&tstart=0

and this posting on mix.oracle.com

https://mix.oracle.com/ideas/26634-offer-a-saas-cloud-computing-version-of-oracle-application-express

So have at it all comments / opinions welcome

Begin PSA.

This is a quick heads up , if you haven't checked the blogs you link to lately and you link to anything on orablogs.com you might want to remove or change that link.

orablogs.com isn't what you think it is anymore ;)

While the first click through is "probably" SFW any link or popup after that is probably NSWF.

Stupid link farms.


End PSA.

One problem with APEX is it has issues with dealing with text values of greater than 32k, while there is a fairly simple workaround it does have quite a few pieces and there has to be an easier way to do it.

Well in APEX 3.1 there is now an integrated javascript call to take care of this. This example also shows some of our new namespaced javascript objects and functions.

I've created a working example here.

Setting the CLOB
<br />function clob_set(){<br /> var clob_ob = new apex.ajax.clob(<br /> function(){<br /> var rs = p.readyState<br /> if(rs == 1||rs == 2||rs == 3){<br /> $x_Show('AjaxLoading');<br /> }else if(rs == 4){<br /> $s('P159_DROP',p.responseText);<br /> $x_Hide('AjaxLoading');<br /> }else{return false;}<br /> }<br /> );<br /><br /> if(!$v_IsEmpty('P159_CLOB')){clob_ob._set($v('P159_CLOB'))};<br />}<br />

What's happening in the previous piece of javascript is I'm creating a apex.ajax.clob object. This object only takes one parameter when being initialized which is a function , or pointer to a function, to call when the XMLHTTP object's readyState changes. In that return function ,and for all built in APEX asynchronous AJAX calls, p is the XMLHTTP object.

Once the apex.ajax.clob object is created you just call set method giving it a string ._set(String Value);

It will automatically create a collection in your session CLOB_CONTENT and populate the CLOB001 column.

You can then use that in a page or application level process , usually by calling a doSubmit() and submitting the page.

The p.responseText on successful population of the CLOB will be SUCCESS.

Getting the CLOB
<br />function clob_get(){<br /> var clob_ob = new apex.ajax.clob(<br /> function(){<br /> var rs = p.readyState<br /> if(rs == 1||rs == 2||rs == 3){<br /> $x_Show('AjaxLoading');<br /> }else if(rs == 4){<br /> $s('P159_DROP',p.responseText);<br /> $x_Hide('AjaxLoading');<br /> }else{return false;}<br /> }<br /> );<br /> clob_ob._get();<br />}<br />

Getting a CLOB is much the same as setting one. Create the apex.ajax.clob object setting the function to call when p.readyState and then call the ._get() method which doesn't take any parameters.

This solution only deals with one clob at a time and the clob is alway put into the CLOB_CONTENT collection, though dealing with multiple clobs is also much easier, more on that later ;). But it is much easier to work with than the old workaround.

I just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey in the last week in HD. If you've never seen or it's been awhile or never seen it in HD do yourself a favor and check it out it's an amazing movie, though it looks like they were a little off on the dates.