APEX - explore the possibilities...
Building an Apex 5 Search Screen
Search
screens have always been a main feature of APEX applications, & there are
many ways they can be implemented. Designing an interactive report gives the
user a large amount of search & filter options, but can be slow & all
the features many not be required. If you create a classic report page, you can
mention that you would like a search bar. This is a much execution which
obtains a text field page item and then uses the value entered into it in LIKE
clause in the query. Second option is to make a search bar from start. Close to
the one generated by the classic report wizard, but now you have full control
over which columns are already searched & can also easily add any other
filters you like.
Few
days back I was asked to create Google Search by a user. This is a very common request for me &
mostly comes from users being used to the fast, predictive searching available
on Search Engine Google.com. It could be tough to explain to the users that Google
took many years & huge amount of money to develop their search tools and
this is not possible for a small organization.
Predictive search bars
The
main feature to duplicate is the predictive issue in the search bar and I
didn’t have to do much work to get this working. By using a Text field with
autocomplete item and supplying the database column you are searching. The
field will predict what you are searching for based on what you have already
typed.
As
you type, the results are reduced on what you have entered.
Refresh Results
Another
great feature we might want to duplicate from Google search is the
automatically updating results set. Using dynamic actions we can make something
similar in APEX.
A
dynamic action with an event ‘Key Release’ should be attached to your
autocompleting text field. This will fire every time a character is typed into
the field. Just add a refresh true action that refreshes a classic report
region containing the results. You may also need to upper the text entered so
that the search brings back all the expected results.
Further
typing into the search field cut the number of results displayed. Now there is
no need to show ‘search’ as now that the report refreshes automatically.
We
can take this significantly further and add more filters to our search page
which also cause the report to refresh when changed, giving the user a way to
search data that feels a bit more
modern than a regular search bar.
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