To help you understand this feature, I have put together a sample application containing lots of different uses of dynamic actions such as drag and drop, styling page items and interactive reports, retrieving data from the server via AJAX, responding to plug-in item events such as the 'Slider' sliding and more. You can either view the application running on the EA instance here or download it from here, so you can install it in your own EA workspace and have a deeper look. If you haven't yet signed up for the APEX 4.0 Early Adopters, take a look at David Peake's related blog post where he explains how to get started.
Note: If you are installing this application, there is one supporting object defined containing a simple PL/SQL function 'getCommission' used by a couple of the examples. During the install, please install this supporting object to get the full functionality. Also, the application requires that you have a copy of the standard 'EMP' table in the parsing schema for the application.
The application makes use of a number of native dynamic actions (that will be built-in to APEX), but also contains 5 dynamic action plug-in examples which you can look at, install and play around with. The plug-ins are:
- Draggable - Define page elements as draggable, with various options such as restricting by vertical or horizontal axis, transparency during drag, containment and more.
- Droppable - Define page elements as droppable, with various options such as restricting which draggables can be dropped, styling to guide the user where they can drop the element and more.
- Execute PL/SQL Code - Define a PL/SQL snippet right from within the dynamic action that will be executed on the server, via AJAX. This is currently only coded for Theme 1.
- Highlight - Patrick Wolf's plug-in that provides the ability to highlight elements on the page.
- Stripe Report - Used for striping interactive report regions with alternate row colours.
Plug-ins are 1 of the major components of APEX 4.0 and if you're interested to learn more I can thoroughly recommend taking a look at Patrick Wolf's 'How to create a plug-in' blog post and accompanying downloads.
I hope you like the application and let me know how you get on!!!
Anthony.
PS: Many thanks to Patrick Wolf for his invaluable help in reviewing these plug-ins.
