Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6-17.
Elements of a form as viewed from Application Builder
The Page Rendering region contains APEX objects required for page rendering. The Page Processing region
contains objects required for page processing, such as validations, processes, and branches. The Shared Components
region contains APEX objects that are shared across pages, such as tabs, lists of values, breadcrumbs, templates, and
security schemes.
For your new Create a Ticket form, in the Page Rendering section, you see that the wizard has created one item
for each of the columns from the
TICKETS
table that you selected via the wizard. There are also two buttons called
Cancel and Create, and a Fetch Row from TICKETS process. This process is an Automated Row Fetch process, which
does exactly what its name says: it fetches a row from the designated table into the current form. The attributes of the
Automated Row Fetch process specify the table owner, the table name, the primary key column(s), success and failure
messages, and a condition.
Notice that the
TICKET_ID
item is present on the page but isn't rendered on the form. It's visible in the Display
Details view of the form as the first element on the page, with no visible element associated with it.
TICKET_ID
is a hidden
item. APEX hidden items exist to hold a value, but although they're rendered on the page, they aren't visible to the user.
In this case, the hidden
TICKET_ID
column holds the primary key value for the
TICKETS
row. As the primary key,
TICKET_ID
is used by the APEX processes to pull data from the database and to process inserts, updates, and deletes on a
TICKETS
row. Because you don't want the end users to edit the primary key, APEX automatically hides it for you.
In the Page Processing column, you have a Process Row of Tickets process, a Reset Page process, and a Go To
Page 1 branch. The Process Row of Tickets process does just that: it processes one row of the
TICKETS
table using the
values from the items that correspond to the columns of the
TICKETS
table. This process fires when the user clicks the
Create button. The reset page process clears the items on the page. It fires when the user clicks the Cancel button.
In the Shared Components region, you need to expand the Parent Tabs tree node to see that this page uses the
Home tab in the TS1 tab set. Expanding the Breadcrumbs region shows the Breadcrumb object. Under Templates, you
see that your form uses the default One Level Tabs - Right Sidebar (Optional/Table Based) page template, the Form
Region template, two different Label templates, and the default Button template.
All APEX form wizards create items, buttons, and processes, but in different combinations to suit the specific
needs of the form type. The other APEX form wizards perform essentially the same way, with slight differences in
process types and navigation objects to accommodate the underlying data source: table or view, procedure, query,
or web service. Next, let's look at a form on a procedure.
