6 Deprecated in Previous Releases

The following section lists features which were deprecated in a previous release but have not been fully removed or desupported from Oracle APEX.

Oracle strongly recommends that developers start to modify their applications as described in this section. Use APEX Advisor to scan existing applications for deprecated attributes.

• Deprecated APEX Item Markup
  
• Deprecated jQuery Date Picker
  
• Previously Deprecated APIs
  
• Deprecated Utilities
  
• Deprecated Legacy Web Service References
  
• jQuery UI Deprecated
  

6.1 Deprecated APEX Item Markup

Future releases of APEX may include fixes and improvements to the accessibility, usability, and functionality of various items that require changing the markup or using custom elements (web components). These changes may create more dynamic behaviors for items, and will be done in a way that minimizes impact to items and forms in existing apps.

The apex.item namespace and item interface are the only supported APIs for customizing and programatically working with items. APEX discourages customizations that rely on undocumented item markup or CSS classes, as these may not work as expected in future releases.

Assumptions about the HTML markup used by each of the native APEX items may not hold in the future. Item customization through Advanced attributes (CSS Classes), Custom Attributes, JavaScript code, and CSS rules that assumes particular markup could break.

For example, you could make the text area item character counter bold by adding class important-text to the Advanced: CSS Classes attribute of a text area and then add a custom CSS rule like:

.important-text.apex-item-textarea + .apex-item-textarea-counter { 
    font-weight: bold;
}

This currently works, but may not in the future because it relies on undocumented class names and the counter element directly following the textarea element. It is also not a best practice to add event handlers in Custom Attributes.

Future releases may document new custom element markup, classes, and CSS variables to allow more supportable customization.

6.2 Deprecated jQuery Date Picker

jQuery Date Picker is now deprecated and cannot be used for new pages or applications. The old jQuery Date Picker JavaScript APIs are not supported.

Oracle recommends replacing all old Date Pickers with the new Date Picker.

6.3 Previously Deprecated APIs

The APEX_IR.GET_REPORT API is deprecated. Instead, use APEX_REGION.OPEN_QUERY_CONTEXT to get interactive report data.

6.4 Deprecated Utilities

The APEXExport utility is deprecated, and will be removed in a future release.

Oracle recommends using SQLcl instead.

6.5 Deprecated Legacy Web Service References

SOAP style Web Service references and legacy support for REST style Web Services references are deprecated.

6.6 jQuery UI Deprecated

jQuery UI is deprecated. Oracle recommends that customers update third-party APEX plug-ins and custom JavaScript code to remove any jQuery UI references. Native APEX components that use jQuery UI will continue to function, but support will be removed in a future release.

Oracle ships a custom bundle of JQuery UI 1.13.2 that includes only the modules that APEX needs. Oracle no longer ships individual widgets or any jQuery UI CSS files.