Change an item Label dynamically

Get it? “an item with many hats”… yeah ok.

Need to change the label of an item on-the-fly? When I run my Apex page it renders item labels like this:

<label for="P1_CONTACT_NUMBER">
  <span>Contact Number</span>
</label>

If the label needs to change based on another item, I could set the label with the value of another item, e.g. “&P1_CONTACT_NUMBER_LABEL.” and when the page is refreshed it would pick up the new label. But at runtime, if the label needs to change dynamically in response to changes in other items, we need to do something else.

Caveat: The need for changing the label should be very rare – it’s bad practice to overload one field with multiple meanings. But if you must, this is what you can do.

It’s easy with a Dynamic Action running some Javascript. This changes the label text for the P1_CONTACT_NUMBER item depending on the value chosen for P1_CONTACT_METHOD, which might be a radio group or select list. The method uses jquery to search for a “label” tag with the attribute “for” that associates it with the desired item; we then navigate down to the “span” element, and call the “text” function to change the label text:

if ($v("P1_CONTACT_METHOD")=='SMS') {
    $("label[for=P1_CONTACT_NUMBER]>span").text("Contact Mobile")
} else if ($v("P1_CONTACT_METHOD")=='EMAIL') {
    $("label[for=P1_CONTACT_NUMBER]>span").text("Contact Email")
} else {
    $("label[for=P1_CONTACT_NUMBER]>span").text("Contact Number")
}

The Dynamic Action is set up as follows:

Event = Change
Selection Type = Item(s)
Item(s) = P1_CONTACT_METHOD
Condition = (no condition)

True Action = Execute JavaScript Code
Fire On Page Load = Yes
Selection Type = (blank)
Code = (the javascript shown above)

Jeffrey Kemp 31 January 2014

APEX / apex-4.2 / dynamic-action / javascript / jQuery / tips-&-tricks /

About Jeffrey Kemp

Application Designer & Developer at Oracle specialising in Oracle APEX (Application Express), Oracle SQL and PL/SQL. Oracle ACE Alumni ♠️. Piano player, father, husband, Christian. The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.