Security check in "HTML Expression" property?

Question

Hi,
question for the gurus, because it's not logical for me how APEX behaves.
I have the following report query:
SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID
     , LAST_NAME
     , EMAIL
     , Apex_Item.Text(1, PHONE_NUMBER) AS PHONE_NUMBER_INPUT
     , PHONE_NUMBER
     , HIRE_DATE
  FROM EMPLOYEESFor the PHONE_NUMBER column I want to set the "HTML Expression" property to
#PHONE_NUMBER_INPUT#For the PHONE_NUMBER_INPUT column, the "Show Column" property would be set to "No".
What is the idea behind this construct? It would allow to make the column PHONE_NUMBER sortable by the actual column value, and not based on the string <INPUT ...> APEX generates with the Apex_item.text call.
But the above trick doesn't work, it always returns NULL as soon as I reference a column where the value includes an "<INPUT..." in the column value. If a reference another column it works fine. Is there some security check built into the "HTML Expression" function?
Patrick
My APEX Blog: http://inside-apex.blogspot.com
The ApexLib Framework: http://apexlib.sourceforge.net
The APEX Builder Plugin: http://apexplugin.sourceforge.net New

Answer 1

Scott,
the problem doesn't seem to be related to the "HTML Expression" property. After reading the following thread Column link omits html tags
I did some further testing and it looks like that whenever a report column is referenced with #COLUMN_NAME#, all tags which are between &lt; and > are stripped out. It doesn't have to be a valid HTML tag, &lt;abc> is also removed.
See the last report at http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=45495:2 for an example.
Patrick
My APEX Blog: http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com
The ApexLib Framework: http://apexlib.sourceforge.net
The APEX Builder Plugin: http://apexplugin.sourceforge.net/ New!