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Feature Request FR-3747
Product Area Page Components
Status CLOSED

4 Voters

Hidden Page Item - equivalent of PL/SQL rowtype

przemyslaw.pytlak Public · Apr 18 2024

Idea Summary
Create some mechanism, for example a new type of Page Item (hidden) that can be accessed inside the server side condition or even as a value in plsql :P1_ITEM.COLUMN_1
 

Use Case
When I create tables, I like to have flags such as

IS_ACTIVE CHAR(1)
IS_TERMINATED CHAR(1)
IS_APPROVED CHAR(1)

Today I've to create many hidden page items to build complicated FORMs which depends on this flags. 

It would be much easier and faster to download record once in one item and use it inside for example a new server side condition as a new type: “ROWTYPE_ITEM” with extra field “COLUMN_NAME” instead of creating sometimes 10-15 hidden page items

We reviewed this idea carefully, and while it was interesting, we concluded that due to all the internal implications we need to take into account, it is unlikely to make its way into APEX.

Comments

Comments

  • greg OP 2 years ago

    Interesting. What if the page item could hold a JSON object and then the session state APIs could use dot notation to get and set values? Then the item value would also be easy to access in javascript/dynamic actions as well.

  • carsten.czarski APEX Team OP 1.8 years ago

    This would have a lot of consequences down the road: For instance, APEX provides many places where a page item is chosen from a select list; all that would need to be changed, so that people can pick an item type and then add the suffix to access a specific member - not sure whether that really adds value to APEX …

    Also, once we talk about a structure and members we will quickly get into nested structures, all of that will make APEX session state logic more complicated. And additional complexity also comes in as a performance cost - such items would no longer be used as simply bind variables in PL/SQL code, as APEX page items are today.

    I think the gain of such a feature does not justify the cost (during development, opportunity cost, during runtime) …