Monday, March 16, 2015

Working with multiple Trees on the same APEX Page (4.2/5.0)

Ever tried to put multiple Trees on the same page in APEX 4.2?

Here's my example:


On the left Tree the "Selected Node Link with" is set to hidden item P1_TREE1, on the right Tree the value that sets the tree is set to P1_TREE2. At least it should do that, but by default if you're values are not unique - in this case empno is the value behind both trees - it doesn't work...
Your first tree will be highlighted twice; one time for ALLEN and one time for SCOTT and not as it should be, on the left ALLEN selected and on the right SCOTT selected.

To fix this issue in APEX 4.2, you need to adapt your select statement so you have unique values for both trees. I typically put a meaningful character in front of the value; for example you can concatenate 'N' for new values (new tree) and 'O' for old values (old tree).


So that fixes the issue of the "Selected Node Page Item" issue with non unique values.
Behind the tree implementation in APEX 4.2, jsTree is used. APEX is not using the most recent version and the way the JavaScript is coded doesn't really work that nicely. If you really like jsTree and for example want to search in it, or you have a very large dataset, check out Tom Petrus' tree plugin and explanation.

So what about APEX 5.0? The tree implementation in APEX 5.0 has the same functionalities, but is a lot better. Behind the scenes jsTree is not used anymore, instead the tree that is also used in the Page Designer is used. The issue with unique values is off the table, so no worries anymore in APEX 5.0.


1 comment:

John Snyders said...

Thanks for trying out the new APEX tree. I'm glad that it solves this issue.