Validation warning

Question

This is primarily an architecture question. I have a number of warning type validations to run. In the forms world I would do this with a procedure feeding it the field_name, and entered value, and then compare this against a table of field_names, min_value, max_values. I have followed numerous threads on displaying warnings, but most seem to hard-code the min / max values in the JavaScript function. Does anyone have some guidance on how to construct a more generic, table driven way of displaying warnings?

Answer 1

There are a couple of basic ways to do validations. The first is to build a simple validation for each rule you want. The benefits of this are ease of enabling/disabling validations when business rules change or just in debugging. The negative is that you can end up with a lot of validations and only one validation warning will show when you submit the page.
If you create a single warning, you can create something like this:
declare
begin
  for c_othr in (select TO_NUMBER(c001) v_tc, c003 v_pycd,
          c004 v_jbcd, TO_NUMBER(c019) v_rt, NVL(TO_NUMBER(c005),0) v_hrs,
          NVL(TO_NUMBER(c020),0) v_pay, TO_NUMBER(c008) v_loc,
          NVL(TO_NUMBER(c007),0) v_eqhrs
      from apex_collections
     where collection_name = 'TC_OTHR')
  loop
    IF c_othr.v_pycd IS NOT NULL and c_othr.v_loc IS NOT NULL THEN
      IF c_othr.v_rt = 0 THEN
        RETURN '<span class="lgl">'||c_othr.v_pycd||'-'||c_othr.v_jbcd||' at '||c_othr.v_loc||' is invalid.</span>';
      ELSE
        IF c_othr.v_pycd = 'MSC' and c_othr.v_pay <=0 THEN
          RETURN '<span class="lgl">MSC codes require a flat pay amount.</span>';
        ELSIF c_othr.v_pycd = 'STU' and c_othr.v_pay <=0 THEN
          RETURN '<span class="lgl">STU codes require a flat pay amount.</span>';
        ELSIF c_othr.v_pycd = 'MOB' and c_othr.v_pay <=0 THEN
          RETURN '<span class="lgl">MOB codes require a flat pay amount.</span>';
        ELSIF c_othr.v_pycd = 'HDR' and c_othr.v_hrs <=0 THEN
           RETURN '<span class="lgl">HDR codes require task hours.</span>';
        ELSIF c_othr.v_pycd = 'TRN' and c_othr.v_pay <=0 THEN
           RETURN '<span class="lgl">TRN codes require a flat pay amount.</span>';
        ELSIF c_othr.v_pycd = 'LDR' and c_othr.v_eqhrs <=0
               and c_othr.v_jbcd NOT IN ('91A','91','A','89C') THEN
           RETURN '<span class="lgl">LDR codes require equipment hours.</span>';
        ELSE
          NULL;
        END IF;
      END IF;
    ELSE
      NULL;
    END IF;
  end loop;
end;This is obviously a complex example where I'm trying to validate input from a collection, but you get the idea. If you want, you can even concatenate the errors together using a break to separate them.
I strongly recommend using the Validations, as then you don't have to worry about where to put the return text or the formatting as APEX does it for you.
Good luck.