In APEX clicking the hyper link doesn't trigger session timeout page

Question

Hi All,
I have a question about the session time out in APEX application. I have created a simple APEX application. In the SQL report region section, i have code like this:
SELECT DOC_Name, DOC_URL,
'<a href="' || DOC_URL || ' target="_blank"/">Download file</a>' pdf_link
FROM test_table
where emp_number =00010001
When user clicks on the hyper link, it will display the destination page to user(for example if DOC_URL = 'http://forums.oracle.com', it will display the oracle forum page in a new browser).
But the issue is that, after user's session timeout (I set for 240 seconds through Shared Components>Edit Security Attributes, i set max the session timeout for example 240 seconds), when i click on this hyperlink, it doesn't trigger my session timeout page and it still displays the page (oracle forum page).
Why in APEX clicking the hyper link doesn't trigger session timeout page after the user session timeout???
how to implememt or fix to trigger the session timeout page after clicking on the hyperlinks?
(BTW, our APEX version is 3.2)
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi Lily,
the reason for that behavior is that APEX is not involved anymore if you click on an external link. That's completely handled by your browser.
To involve APEX timeout handling you could redirect to a specific page in your application which performs the final redirect.
For example:
1) Create a new page 999
2) Create hidden page item P999_URL
3) Create a before header PL/SQL process with the following source
owa_util.redirect_url('http://'||:P999_URL);
apex_application.g_unrecoverable_error := TRUE;If you want to embed a link, create a link to page 999 and set the page item P999_URL to forums.oracle.com
You could also add a white list into the above code to verify that you are just redirecting to valid URLs, so that nobody is using your trusted application URL for phishing attacks.
Hope that gives you a direction
Patrick
Regards
Patrick
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