Remove HTML from Interactive report download

Question

I have interactive reports where the column link on a specific column has to be dynamic, that means, it cannot be hard coded in the column link attributes. The following is an example of one such report query:
case when d.object_type_description ='Business Service' then
'< href="f?p='||:app_id||':183:'||:app_session||'::::P183_OBJECT_ID:'||d.id||'">'||d.object_name||'</>'
when d.object_type_description = 'Real Time Event' then
'< href="f?p='||:app_id||':162:'||:app_session||'::::P162_OBJECT_ID:'||d.id||'">'||d.object_name||'</>'
else
   null
end as "OBJECT NAME"As you see in the above example, the link on the "Object Name" column could either redirect to page 183 or to page 162 based on the "Object Type Description" column.
The column attribute of the "Object Name" column has "Display Type" set to "Standard Report Column". That works perfectly fine in the UI of the report. However, if I download the IR data (in any format) from the Actions -> Download menu, the object name column values are downloaded with the HTML characters as:
< href="f?p=15548:183:6072319179284::::P183_OBJECT_ID:255245470513999672860510787772603748464">JP010000</>where JP010000 is the object name.
Is there a way I can strip the HTML from the column values in the downloaded files?
I am using Apex 4.1.

Answer 1

Rohit,
You can define the link in the query, make it hidden, use the value as column link URL. So, your query will look like the following:
d.object_name,
case when d.object_type_description ='Business Service' then
    'f?p='||:app_id||':183:'||:app_session||'::::P183_OBJECT_ID:'||d.id
when d.object_type_description = 'Real Time Event' then
    'f?p='||:app_id||':162:'||:app_session||'::::P162_OBJECT_ID:'||d.id
else
   null
end linkChange the display type of LINK column to Hidden. In column link, enter #OBJECT_NAME# as Link Text. Select URL as Target. Enter #LINK# as URL value. In APEX 4.2, you can do this in easier way by defining HTML Column Expression.
Regards,
Christina
Edited by: cbcho on Sep 27, 2012 11:35 AM