Conditionally Required Floating Item

An item in the Universal Theme using the Optional – Floating template looks like this:

An item using the Required – Floating template looks like this:

In addition, if the item is required we would most probably set the Value Required attribute to Yes. What if the item is sometimes required but not always? How do we create a Conditionally Required field?

Firstly, we would make sure there is a Validation on the field that checks that the value is provided if required. This way, regardless of what the form may or may not send to the database, it is validated appropriately.

Secondly, to indicate to the user that the item is required or optional, based on the value of another item, we can use a Dynamic Action that sets the required item property (this triggers the client-side validation) and adds or removes the is-required class from the item’s container (this shows the little red “required” indicator on the page).

For example, let’s say that whether item P1_COST_CENTRE is required or not is dependent on whether a hidden item, P1_COST_CENTRE_REQUIRED, has the value 'Y'.

• Create a Dynamic Action
  1. Event: Change
  2. Selection Type: Item(s)
  3. Item(s): P1_COST_CENTRE_REQUIRED
  4. Client-side Condition Type: Item = Value
  5. Item: P1_COST_CENTRE_REQUIRED
  6. Value: Y
• Create a True Action: Execute JavaScript Code

var item = $("#P1_COST_CENTRE");
item.prop("required",true);
item.closest(".t-Form-fieldContainer").addClass("is-required");

• Create a False Action: Execute JavaScript Code

var item = $("#P1_COST_CENTRE");
item.prop("required",false);
item.closest(".t-Form-fieldContainer").removeClass("is-required");

The above code works for all item templates (“Optional”, “Optional – Above”, “Optional – Floating”, etc.) in the Universal Theme; I’ve tested this on APEX 18.2 and 19.1.

Note: this is custom code for the Universal Theme, so it may or may not work for other themes; and might stop working in a future revision of the theme.

Plugins

• Demo

UPDATE 29/7/2019: I’ve created some simple Dynamic Action plugins (for APEX 18.2 and later) to implement this, if you’re interested you can download them from here:

• Show Item as Required
• Show Item as Optional

To use these plugins, select them as an Action to take on a Dynamic Action:

EDIT 29/7/2019: modified to use a better method to find the container div.

Older Themes

In other themes, the way that a required field is rendered is different. For example, in Theme 26 (Productivity Applications) the label for a required item is rendered in bold, along with a red asterisk; if the item is optional, no red asterisk is rendered. The way to make an item conditionally mandatory in this theme is:

1. Set the item to use the Required template (so that the red asterisk is rendered).
2. In the Dynamic Action JavaScript, execute the following if the item should be optional:

var itemLabel = $("label[for='P1_COST_CENTRE']");
itemLabel.removeClass("uRequired");
itemLabel.addClass("uOptional");

To make the item required again:

var itemLabel = $("label[for='P1_COST_CENTRE']");
itemLabel.removeClass("uOptional");
itemLabel.addClass("uRequired");

Change Item Icon Dynamically

The floating item type has an optional “Icon” property that allows you to render an icon next to the item, which can help users quickly identify what the item is for. This is especially helpful when the form has a lot of items.

The icon attribute can be static, e.g. fa-hashtag, or it can be chosen based on the value of another item, e.g. &P1_FA_ICON..

If you want the icon to change dynamically as the user enters or modifies data, it’s a little bit more complicated. I have a list item based on a table of asset categories, and each asset category has an icon assigned to it. When the user selects an asset category from the list I want it to get the icon from the table and show it in the item straight away.

To do this, I use two Dynamic Actions: (1) a PL/SQL action which updates the hidden Pn_FA_ICON item, and (2) a Javascript action which manipulates the displayed icon next to the list item.

The Execute PL/SQL Code action is a simple PL/SQL block which gets the icon from the reference table for the selected category code. Make sure the “Wait for Result” is “Yes”, and make sure the Items to Submit and Items to Return are set to P260_CATEGORY_CODE and P260_CATEGORY_FA_ICON, respectively.

select x.fa_icon
into   :P260_CATEGORY_FA_ICON
from   asset_categories x
where  x.code = :P260_CATEGORY_CODE;

On examining the source of the page, we see that the select item is immediately followed by a span which shows the icon:

The Execute JavaScript Code action finds the item (in this case, the triggering element), then searches the DOM for the following span with the apex-item-icon class. Once found, it resets the classes on the span with a new set of classes, including the new icon.

It’s a little gimmicky but it’s an easy way to delight users, and it might help them to quickly identify data entry mistakes.

Warning: due to the way the javascript manipulates the DOM, this method is not guaranteed to work correctly in future releases of APEX., so it will need to be retested after upgrades.

“Before Header” Branch

It’s well known that after processing a page one often needs to add a Branch so the user is taken to another page, e.g. to start the next step in a process. It’s less common to need a Branch that is evaluated before the page is shown. This is a “Before Header” Branch and I use it when the user might open a page but need to be redirected to a different one.

A good example is a page that is designed to direct the user to two or more different pages depending on what data they requested.

Another way that a branch like this can be useful is where a user might navigate to a page that should show a record, but if the record ID is not set, I might want the page to automatically redirect the user back to a report page instead.

Of course, you have to take some care with these sorts of branches; if the target page also has its own “Before Header” branch, that will also be evaluated; if the user ends up in a loop of branches the page will fail to load (with a “ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS” error).

This is the order in which various steps are done before APEX shows a page:

1. Authentication check
2. Verify session
3. “Before Header” Branches
4. Authorization check
5. Computations
6. “Before Header” Processes
7. Regions, etc.

One of the implications of the above order is that any computations or processes that set or change application state (e.g. an application item) are not run before it evaluates conditions or attributes for any “Before Header” Branches. This applies regardless of whether the computations or processes are defined on the page, or defined globally in Shared Components. This little detail tripped me up today, because I had a branch that I needed to run based on a condition that relied on state that should have been set by a “Before Header” process defined globally.

If you need to redirect a user to a different page on the basis of any application state that is set by a computation or process, you can use a PL/SQL Process instead that does the redirect. The PL/SQL code to use is something like:

apex_util.redirect_url(p_url => apex_page.get_url(p_page => 1));

Warning: redirect_url raises the exception ORA-20876: Stop APEX Engine, so it’s probably preferable to avoid combining this with other PL/SQL code that might need to be committed first.