Can I use my javascript to change the session state of an item?

Question

All,
I currently have a page that has two regions: a report and a checkbox region. The checkbox region is full of checkboxes that are tied to each column in the report. I have javascript in the page HTML header that hides/displays the report column when they click the corresponding checkbox. The hiding and displaying columns works just fine.
Here is my problem: my users need to export the report (with some columns hidden) as a CSV file. Unfortunately, the javascript function I use to hide/show the columns does not change the session value of the checkbox region and thus, APEX does not 'know' that some columns have been hidden. Because of this, APEX exports ALL columns.
Can I add an onChange to my javascript that each time the user checks/unchecks a box, it adds/removes that item from the checkbox region's session value?
Thanks!
BoilerUP
P.S. I do not want to submit the page - I would like for this to be done on the fly, just like the columns hiding/appearing with the javascript. Thanks!
Message was edited by:
BoilerUP

Answer 1

Ok, I still cannot get this to work. I keep getting a javascript page error (yellow exclamation icon in I.E.) I have the following code in the HTML header:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
function va_GetCheckboxes(pName)
var d=document;
var l_return = "";
var inputs=d.body.getElementsByTagName('INPUT');
var l_el;
for (var j=0;j<inputs.length;j++) {
     l_el = inputs[j];
     if (l_el.type=="checkbox" && l_el.name && l_el.name==pName
         && l_el.checked) {
            l_return += ":" + l_el.value;
return l_return.substring(1);
</script>I also have the following code in the HTML Form Element Attributes section for the checkbox item:
onclick="html_HideBasedOnCheckBox(this,this.value);set_Some_Item('P2_COLUMN_HIDE_CHECKBOXES',that_string)"Do I need to replace "that_string" with something or is there something else that I'm doing wrong?