Oracle Application Express includes declarative BLOB support to enable developers to declaratively upload files in forms, and download or display files in reports. BLOB display and download can also be authored procedurally using PL/SQL. This section describes how to upload, download and display files, and how to manage additional file attributes such as MIME type and file name that are important for proper management of files stored in BLOB columns. Using this functionality you can easily extend your Oracle Application Express applications to manage files including images, documents, videos, and so on.
If you create a Form (either using the Create Application Wizard, create page of type Form - or Report and Form, or create region of type Form) or add an item to an existing form, any item whose source is a database column of type BLOB will result in an item of type File Browse. When the form is called for INSERT, the file selected by the user will be loaded into the BLOB column. When the form is called for update, a download link is displayed to the right of the Browse button. Users can use this link to download the file.
The defaulted BLOB support does not give you all the information a typical application must effectively manage a BLOB. In addition to knowing that the column is a BLOB, more information about the file will provide a better experience for the end-user. The File Browse page item has additional settings to facilitate managing this additional information completely declaratively.
See Also:
File Browse in Appendix A, "About Item Types", item level help for the File Browse settingsThere are two different types of storage types available within the File Browse item type:
BLOB column specific in Item Source Attribute - Completely declarative approach that supports configuration of the additional settings discussed here. This will reference a BLOB in your own database table.
Table WWV_FLOW_FILES - Advanced option if you prefer to reference a BLOB stored in the WWV_FLOW_FILES table.
To provide this additional information, it is recommended that you add additional columns to your base table to store and track the MIME type, file name, last updated date and character set settings. You can accomplish this by extending your table. For example:
ALTER TABLE emp ADD
(ATTACH_MIMETYPE VARCHAR2(255),
ATTACH_FILENAME VARCHAR2(255),
ATTACH_LAST_UPDATE DATE,
ATTACH_CHARSET VARCHAR2(128));
Note:
The character set of theBLOB is not automatically set on upload. To store the character set value for your BLOB, you must provide an additional page item on your page which is bound to the column you use to store the character set, and where the user will be able to specify the character set for the document they are uploading.If you manually create a form on a custom table, you can still take advantage of this feature. To do so, use the File Browse item type with a Storage Type setting of BLOB column specified in Item Source Attribute, on a page with a DML Process type of DML_PROCESS_ROW. This process determines the table name and primary key columns.
If the BLOB you are working with is an image, you can display it in the form as well. You can use the Display Image item type to handle this declaratively, see Appendix A, "About Item Types" for details. See "Working With BLOBs Procedurally" to handle procedurally.
Because there is no set to NULL when using File Browse, if you need to provide a mechanism to remove an image reference, you must include a special Remove Image button to nullify the necessary columns. Consider the following example:
UPDATE demo_product_info
SET product_image = NULL,
MIMETYPE = NULL,
FILENAME = NULL,
IMAGE_LAST_UPDATE = NULL,
CHARSET = NULL
WHERE product_id = :P6_PRODUCT_ID;
Oracle Application Express includes BLOB support for both classic and interactive reports. If you use a wizard to create a report and include a column of type BLOB, basic support will be included. Additional information should be added after generation to make the download capability more user friendly.
To facilitate the inclusion of a download link in a report, the report includes the selection of the length of the BLOB (for example, dbms_lob.getlength(RESUME)). If the length is 0, the BLOB is NULL and no download link is displayed. In the same way you specify a format mask for a date or number you can format a download link. The DOWNLOAD format is more complex however then other format masks in that you are required to specify at least three parameters, for example:
DOWNLOAD:EMP:RESUME:EMPNO
The parameters of the DOWNLOAD format are described in the following table:
| Position | Attribute | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DOWNLOAD | Yes | Identifies the DOWNLOAD report format mask. |
| 2 | Table Name | Yes | Case sensitive name of table containing target column of type BLOB. |
| 3 | Column containing BLOB | Yes | Case sensitive name of column of type BLOB. |
| 4 | Primary Key Column 1 | Yes | Case sensitive name of primary key column 1. |
| 5 | Primary Key Column 2 | No | Case sensitive name of primary key column 2. |
| 6 | MIME type Column | No | Case sensitive column name used to store the MIME type. |
| 7 | Filename Column | No | Case sensitive column name used to store the filename of the BLOB. If NULL, the column name is used as the default when a user downloads the file. |
| 8 | Last Update Column | No | Case sensitive column name used to store the last update date of the BLOB. If used, the HTTP header of the file download indicates the date of last modification and Web browsers will be able to cache the BLOB. If not specified, the browser may not be able to cache files. |
| 9 | Character Set Column | No | Case sensitive column name used to store the character set of the BLOB. Most relevant for Asian languages which may need to maintain the character set encoding. |
| 10 | Content Disposition | No | Specify inline or attachment. All other values ignored. If a MIME type is provided and the file is a type that can be displayed, the file will be displayed. If MIME type is not provided, or the file cannot be displayed inline, the user will be prompted to download. |
| 11 | Download Text | No | String used for the download link. If nothing provided, Download is used. Note that this will support substitutions (useful for translated applications). |
Consider the following example:
DOWNLOAD:EMP:RESUME:EMPNO::RESUME_MIMETYPE:RESUME_FILENAME:RESUME_LAST_UPDATE::attachment:Resume
If you have a report column with a format mask that begins with DOWNLOAD:, you will see a link below the format 'BLOB Download Format Mask'. This popup assists in entering all the parameters necessary for the DOWNLOAD format.
If the BLOB you are working with is an image, you can display it in the report as well. To do this, you use the new report format mask of 'IMAGE'. Regardless of the MIME type, the report will always attempt to display the BLOB. If the BLOB cannot be rendered, a broken image will be displayed.
The parameters of the IMAGE format mask are described in the following table:
| Position | Attribute | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IMAGE | Yes | Identifies the IMAGE report format mask. |
| 2 | Table Name | Yes | Case sensitive name of table containing target column of type BLOB. |
| 3 | Column containing BLOB | Yes | Case sensitive name of column of type BLOB. |
| 4 | Primary Key Column 1 | Yes | Case sensitive name of primary key column 1. |
| 5 | Primary Key Column 2 | No | Case sensitive name of primary key column 2. |
| 6 | MIME type Column | No | Case sensitive column name used to store the MIME type. |
| 7 | Filename Column | No | Not used for IMAGE format but left in so that the format can easily be changed between IMAGE and DOWNLOAD. |
| 8 | Last Update Column | No | Case sensitive column name used to store the last update date of the BLOB. If used, the HTTP header of the file download indicates the date of last modification and Web browsers will be able to cache the BLOB. If not specified, the browser may not be able to cache files. |
| 9 | Character Set Column | No | Not used for IMAGE format but left in so that the format can easily be changed between IMAGE and DOWNLOAD. |
| 10 | Content Disposition | No | Not used for IMAGE format but left in so that the format can easily be changed between IMAGE and DOWNLOAD. |
| 11 | Alt Text | No | String used for the alt tag associated with the image. |
Consider the following example:
IMAGE:EMP:RESUME:EMPNO::RESUME_MIMETYPE:RESUME_FILENAME:RESUME_LAST_UPDATE::attachment:Resume
If you have a report column with a format mask that begins with 'IMAGE:', you will see a link below the format 'BLOB Download Format Mask'. This popup assists in entering all the parameters necessary for the IMAGE format.
As an alternative to using the built-in methods of providing a download link, you can use the APEX_UTIL.GET_BLOB_FILE_SRC function. One advantage of this approach, is the ability to more specifically format the display of the image (with height and width tags). Please note that this approach is only valid if called from a valid Oracle Application Express session. Also, this method requires that the parameters that describe the BLOB to be listed as the format of a valid item within the application. That item is then referenced by the function.
See Also:
"GET_BLOB_FILE_SRC Function" in the Oracle Application Express API Reference