Blog Archive

  • Bulk Data Loading from a Zip

    A friend is learning APEX to automate his business mentoring athletes. In his practice, he captures training performance metrics, then needs to analyze clients’ progress toward their goals over time. His instruments record an athlete’s performance data in a comma-separated values (CSV) format. Recently, he asked if APEX could load data from a CSV file. After showing him how easy it was, he added another twist:”What if I have a directory full of CSV files, organized into subdirectories by athlete? After a week’s sessions with clients, there could be a lot of files. Will I have to import them one…

  • Pushing the PWA Envelope

    If you have a smartphone, you’re already familiar with push notifications. They’re the timely alerts with some useful info from your favorite apps. In 23.1, your APEX solutions can send them, too, using a page process or send_push_notification() API. You simply set the message details and APEX securely notifies the user on all their subscribed devices, if any. In this article, see a sample app in action, how to try it out yourself, and where to download the slides from my recent APEX Alpe Adria conference talk with more in-depth info about push notifications in APEX. Overview of the Sample…

  • Page Processing Power Unchained

    APEX 23.1 execution chains greatly expand the power of your page processes. This new process type lets you assign a name to a group of child processes that will execute in sequence if the parent’s condition is true. Any of the chain’s child processes can be another chain if needed, so you can organize page logic into a more self-documenting tree structure. In addition, you can configure any branch of this “processing tree” to run in the background with the flick of a switch in the Property Editor. Your end-users move on to tackle other tasks in your app while…

  • Designer Collab for Date Ranges

    When searching for hotels, I often specify check in and check out dates with two clicks on the same mini-calendar. The new date picker’s dayFormatter function let me achieve the same user experience in an APEX app, with some CSS help from my designer colleague Jeff Langlais. I got the basic functionality working; then Jeff updated the stylesheet with his CSS magic to make it sing. Finally, a tip from colleague Stefan Dobre about JavaScript classes unlocked how my Java programming experience could be an asset while learning this new language. It inspired me to refactor my code to make…

  • Custom Date Picker Formatting

    Overview APEX 22.2 introduced a new lighter-weight date picker that is faster, offers better accessibility, and features a flexible day formatter function. Using the Format Date Picker Days plug-in, low-coders can easily format a date picker using a SQL query or an ICS calendar file to style a set of days in the “mini month” calendar used to select a date. In this article we explore the day formatter function, learn what the plug-in can do declaratively, and see how to extend what the plug-in can do while gaining some JavaScript newbie insights in the process. A Simple dayFormatter Function…