Smooth Auto-Tab & Auto-Submit Data Entry with Oracle Apex

With data entry, speed is key. Especially for the people doing it. Every tab, space, mouse move and enter adds up. 

Thankfully there are plenty of tools built in Oracle Apex to help. The following is an example of such that takes advantage of the 'dynamic actions' options in Apex. 

In this example, I utilize them to accomplish: 

1. An auto-tab after selecting an item from a select list.
2. Then an auto-submit after the last field. 
3. And bring it back to the start for more data entry. 

1. Auto Tab

Normally a user would have to tab once to select an item from a select list and tab again to go to the next field. But with a custom dynamic action, you can do that second tab for them. To set that up, create a dynamic action with:

• Dynamic Action: Custom
  • When:
    • Event: Custom
    • Custom Event: result
    • Selection Type: Item(s)
    • Item(s): Select your select list page item
• Then crate a true action, 'Set Focus'
  • Affected Elements:
    • Selection Type: Item(s)
    • Items(s): Select your next page item

2. Auto-Submit & 3. Reset Entry to Start

To auto-submit(insert) the entry after the last field, you can do a simple 'Lose Focus' dynamic action on the last page item. I can go into this in detail if there are people who would like, but in summary I setup the following:

• Dynamic Action: Lose Focus
  • When: last page item
  • True actions
    • Execute Server-side Code
      • pl/sql code for the insert
    • Refresh reports/items
    • Set Focus(on first page item)

What about preventing data entry errors?

Well for that we can run custom validations in the above. Maybe the next blog post?