Hidden html tags.

Question

To all my partners in code,
Here is my story: I am currently a novice at PL/SQL and APEX, so bear with me. I am creating a "User creation page". This page instructs the user to enter a username and password. I then run a validation on the username to make sure it meets my standards (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and '_', etc. ). If it doesn't meet my standards then the page is not submitted and the user has to re-enter his or her desired username.
Here is my issue: When the validation fails I want a detailed message about why it failed, (e.g. Username contains invalid characters). I want this error to only display "INLINE IN NOTIFICATION"... however, I want to somehow highlight the problem field without sending the entire message text (my textbox item PX_USERNAME has a label of "Username"). Currently my workaround has been to have the label look like this:
ITEM LABEL FOR PX_USERNAME:
<font color = "&PX_COLOR.">Username</font>
PX_COLOR is a hidden field in my app that has a default value of "black"... upon failing in the validation, it changes the value to "red" and all works and everyone is happy. Except me...
I wanted to actually send tags that way... for example (and bear with me):
ITEM LABEL FOR PX_USERNAME:
&PX_HTMLOPENTAG. Username &PX_HTMLCLOSETAG.
IF Validation = fail THEN
:PX_HTMLOPENTAG := '<font color="red"><strong>';
:PX_HTMLCLOSETAG := '</strong></font>';
For any of you who have tried that before know that the USERNAME label would look like this once the page opens:
<font color="red"><strong> Username </strong></font>
Meaning the tags were really converted to:
<font color="red"><strong< Username ........
Here is my request: Am I going about this the hard way? Or is there an easier way to change the format of the Username label if the validation fails. If not... is there any way to do what I am doing and have the tags parse as real tags and not as their entities (e.g. >)?
I do apologize for the long post and possible spelling AND OR grammatical errors. But I am certain that there is enough information that you know what I am hoping to do.
Thank you in advance and good luck, oh and thank you!
TJ
P.S. Thank you...

Answer 1

TJ,
Like Andy said, making a custom Label Template will probably be the best solution.
For example, you could put this in the On Error Before Label box:
<img src="#IMAGE_PREFIX#inline_error.gif" alt="Error" border="0" height="16" width="16"><strong>
and put this in the On Error After Label box:
</strong>
If you are using version 2.2 or later, then the reason that you are having trouble with your current approach is
that the contents of Hidden fields are escaped before they are rendered.
You could try using Application Items instead of hidden fields for those values if you still want to use that approach.
Doug