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Implementing a Current Record Indicator in your APEX Reports

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Developers with an Oracle Forms background might still remember this nice feature: If you click on a row in an Oracle Form "report" then it can be highlighted - either the full row or just a small first item of the row. The main difference with the Oracle Forms "reports" and the APEX Reports is that in Forms a "report" is usually comparable to an APEX Tabular Form. But a similar feature is frequently asked for - especially at customer sites that are transforming from Forms to APEX.

With a few lines of code we can make these customers happy .... Let's get started.

First of all your query should contain one column (as "Plain Text") that describes the Primary Key - that might even be a concatenated set of columns. Now we have to tell APEX that this is the column that contains our PK. For a Standard Report just add the CSS class "rowlink" to the column (without the quotes) . For an Interactive Report we need to use the HTML Expression:
 <span class=”rowlink”>#PK-Column#</span>. 
Of course you have to replace "PK-Column" with the alias of the Primary Key column in your query. This column will be hidden when running the page so if you don want to see it, you have to name that column twice in your query.
That's the only thing you have to do for every report with a "Highlight Current Record" feature.

The wizardry will be implemented on Page 0 / Global Page. First of all add a hidden item P0_CURRENT_RECORD. Set these properties: Value Protected = No,  Source = Null (always).
Next, create a Dynamic Action that fires After Refresh of this JavaScript Expression:
$(".rowlink").closest("div.t-Region, div.t-IRR-region")
This expression returns the div (either Standard Report or Interactive Report) that contains a "rowlink").
And the Action is, execute this piece of JavaScript:

//Remove the alternating rows and row highlighting from the report
$('.t-Report--altRowsDefault, .t-Report--rowHighlight', this.triggeringElement).removeClass('t-Report--altRowsDefault t-Report--rowHighlight');

//Hide the rowlink column and header
var header = $(".rowlink").closest('td').hide().attr('headers');
$('#'+header).hide();

// For each "rowlink" item
$(".rowlink").each( function(i,key){
  // Define a click handler for the TR that contains a   
  $(this).closest('tr').on("click", function(){ 
    $(".highlight").removeClass("highlight");
    $(this).addClass("highlight");
    $s('P0_CURRENT_RECORD', $(key).text());
  });
  // Create a data-id attribute for each rowlink  
  $(this).attr("data-id", $(key).text())  
});

// Add a "clickable" class to the TR -- not for this feature, see next blog post
$('.rowlink').closest('tr').addClass('clickable');

if ( !( $v("P0_CURRENT_RECORD") ) ) {
  // Issue a dummmy click on the first row
  $(".rowlink:first").closest("tr").click();
}
else {
  // Issue a dummmy click on the row containing the current PK
  $(".rowlink[data-id='"+ $v("P0_CURRENT_RECORD") +"']").closest("tr").click();    
}
Finally we need some CSS to actually see the highlighting in action - showing the current record with a light blue background that even changes slightly from color when hovering over it:
.t-Report tr.clickable { 
  cursor : pointer; 
}

.a-IRR-table tr td, 
.t-Report tr td {
  background-color: transparent;
}

.a-IRR-table tr.highlight,
.t-Report tr.highlight {
  background-color : lightblue;  
}

.a-IRR-table tr.highlight:hover td,
.t-Report tr.highlight:hover td{
  background-color: lightsteelblue;  
}

This code seems to work fine in most situations. There is an issue if you use something else than the Heading : "Fixed to None" property for an Interactive Report. And there might be a challenge when your page contains multiple reports.... but consider that as homework ;-)
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