Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

Creating a Form for Email with APEX

Not only will this section show a simple form for emailing, but it will also introduce the HTMLDB_MAILpackage.  The HTMLDB_MAIL package is used by the developer to send email from within APEX.

For information on setting up Email, refer to Chapter 15 - HTML DB Administration II.

In the following example, it will be necessary to build a new page with page ID 1080.  The page created by the author is shown in Figure 8.19 and is included in the EASY Sample application in the code depot.  Building pages, buttons, and page items have already been introduced, so those steps will not be repeated here.  Since many text messages are limited to maximum length, the text area was limited to 160 characters.

The data in the select list is populated from a table named EASY_PERSON.  The table contains a column with an email address that can be used to send text messages to a person's cell phone.

To send the text message, an After Submit page process will be created that executes on the condition when the Send Message button is pressed.  The code used for the email process is shown in file ch8_1.sql contained in the code depot.

The HTMLDB_MAIL.SEND procedure can send text of data type VARCHAR2 or CLOB; however, the limit for the length of any single line is 1000 characters.  After the 1000 character limit, a new line must be included before continuing the email message.

The person's pager address is being selected and used in the p_to parameter of the send procedure.  The message body is taken from the P1080_MSGTEXT page item.

Also, take notice of the use of htmldb_mail.push_queue procedure.  Email in APEX is placed into a message queue and processed every ten minutes.  However, since text messages can sometimes be urgent, such as a production database issue, the htmldb_mail_push_queue procedure has been used to force the email queue to send all messages immediately.

The above book excerpt is from:

Easy HTML-DB Oracle Application Express

Create Dynamic Web Pages with OAE

ISBN 0-9761573-1-4   

Michael Cunningham & Kent Crotty

http://www.rampant-books.com/book_2005_2_html_db.htm