Skip to main content

Simple script to upload images into XML-DB (EPG)

By
When you develop your APEX application using the APEX Listener or OHS, it is a good habit to create a separate (sub)folder to serve your images - and other files - into your application. Usually the name of the subfolder reflects the name of the application. So you reference these images, like an "enabled" image in your application by '#IMAGE_PREFIX#my-app/enabled.png'. So far so good.
But now you need to deploy this to a server that is using the Embedded PLSQL Gateway (EPG)? How to serve these images into that application without changing your code? Uploading the images the regular way into the workspace or application doesn't help, because you won't get the subdirectory prefix. The only way (I know of) is to upload these images into the XML-DB Repository. 

So I created this script - feel free to use, edit or whatever you want to do with it (no guarantees!):

Comments

Unknown said…
The script looks easy but copying it is extremely hard! :)
2:30 pm
Roel said…
Yeah, I know. But this was the easiest/fastest way to let it look nice.
2:48 pm
Byte64 said…
Uhm I must be missing something here Roel, because I have been uploading all files I needed during the last years very easily, by using the WebDAV (HTTP) protocol that you just need to enable in the EPG configuration.
That allows me to see the XDB file system as a top folder where I can create as many subfolders I want to using the normal client OS methods (in Mac OS X this works just great, I go to the Finder menu and then Go, specify the server name or ip address with the port if other than 80 and I'll get connected to the root XDB folder).

So, besides the usual "i" folder containing all the built-in apex stuff, I created my own folders that I can then reference from within Apex by using a custom substitution string.
Alternatively one can create a subfolder "myapp" of "i" and the reference #IMAGE_PREFIX#/myapp, as you described, but I find that less than desirable because it will get "renamed" along with "i" when you perform a major upgrade of Apex even if I don't need to change my app's images.

Please tell me if I mistook something.

Regards
Flavio
6:42 pm
Marco Gralike said…
AS far as I read the post, Roel only demonstrated the SQL, PL/SQL way of doing it. In principle your doing the same without knowing it, via the drag & drop method while using WebDAV

Marco
9:29 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Filtering in the APEX Interactive Grid

By
Remember Oracle Forms? One of the nice features of Forms was the use of GLOBAL items. More or less comparable to Application Items in APEX. These GLOBALS where often used to pre-query data. For example you queried Employee 200 in Form A, then opened Form B and on opening that Form the Employee field is filled with that (GLOBAL) value of 200 and the query was executed. So without additional keys strokes or entering data, when switching to another Form a user would immediately see the data in the same context. And they loved that. In APEX you can create a similar experience using Application Items (or an Item on the Global Page) for Classic Reports (by setting a Default Value to a Search Item) and Interactive Reports (using the  APEX_IR.ADD_FILTER  procedure). But what about the Interactive Grid? There is no APEX_IG package ... so the first thing we have to figure out is how can we set a filter programmatically? Start with creating an Interactive Grid based upon the good o...
1 comment
Read more

Stop using validations for checking constraints !

By
 If you run your APEX application - like a Form based on the EMP table - and test if you can change the value of Department to something else then the standard values of 10, 20, 30 or 40, you'll get a nice error message like this: But it isn't really nice, is it? So what do a lot of developers do? They create a validation (just) in order to show a nicer, better worded, error message like "This is not a valid department".  And what you then just did is writing code twice : Once in the database as a (foreign key) check constraint and once as a sql statement in your validation. And we all know : writing code twice is usually not a good idea - and executing the same query twice is not enhancing your performance! So how can we transform that ugly error message into something nice? By combining two APEX features: the Error Handling Function and the Text Messages! Start with copying the example of an Error Handling Function from the APEX documentation. Create this function ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Refresh selected row(s) in an Interactive Grid

By
In my previous post I blogged about pushing changed rows from the dabatase into an Interactive Grid . The use case I'll cover right here is probably more common - and therefore more useful! Until we had the IG, we showed the data in a report (Interactive or Classic). Changes to the data where made by popping up a form page, making changes, saving and refreshing the report upon closing the dialog. Or by clicking an icon / button / link in your report that makes some changes to the data (like changing a status) and ... refresh the report.  That all works fine, but the downsides are: The whole dataset is returned from the server to the client - again and again. And if your pagination size is large, that does lead to more and more network traffic, more interpretation by the browser and more waiting time for the end user. The "current record" might be out of focus after the refresh, especially by larger pagination sizes, as the first rows will be shown. Or (even wors...
Post a Comment
Read more