Classic report with checkbox

When an action needs to be taken on specific records of a classic report, you need some kind of row-selector.
I came accross a situation where I couldn't used multi-row processing.
So I used the checkbox (apex_item.checkbox) in the SQL for a classic report.
The process fired at page-submit should now only process those rows that are checked.

This is not a difficult thing to do, just some logical steps you need to follow.

In this example you see a screen a supervisor can approve multiple holiday requests in one go for all the people in his team.

The supervisor can only reject a request by going to a detailled screen (clicking on the edit icon). But as a quick approve solution, the supervisor can select multiple requests and approve them in one go.

The checkbox in the first column is displayed with the apex_item.checkbox function:

In the header you notice a "select-all" / "de-select-all" checkbox. This works as a toggle function by editing the header of the column, entering following line:
 <input type="checkbox" title="Selecteer of de-selecteer alle aanvragen" onclick="$f_CheckFirstColumn(this)" />

The button "Goedkeuren" ( = approve button) performs a submit page. And so the process "Multi Select Approve" is launched.

The process needs to figure out wheater or not a line is selected. To play it nice, when you press the approve button, but no rows are selected, you get an error message.

You see that in the select statement in the first step, the internal ID that is used = 1: apex_item.checkbox( 1, p.proposal_id).
By doing this, I can refer to it on the processing side by using the function apex_application.g_f01.

So first thing that is done is to see if there are rows selected. If not the error message is posted to the screen and an error is raised. Hence the page processing is stopped immediately.
If at least one is selected we will go in a loop, performing the action - in this case launching the kick_proposal procedure - for each SELECTED row.


Here you go. Nothing too difficult, but can be handy in many situations.
Happy to share ....