Conditional Column Formatting in APEX

I wanted to share a little trick I’ve used in APEX for a while now to conditionally format report columns based on their values. I’m sure there are plenty of alternatives to this trick, including the 4 built-in conditional alternatives for a row when using a named column template.

At a high level, this technique uses the following components:

1. A hidden column in the query that returns the formatting attributes for a column. I’m going to return the color or padding-left in my examples later in this post.
2. Edit the Report Attributes > Column Attributes > Column Formatting > HTML Expression of a visible column and use the hidden column to change it’s formatting. This is the same section you apply a date or number format.

Example 1 - Color Code Salary

Query

select empno,ename,sal,
	   case when sal < 1000 then 'red'
		    when sal between 1000 and 2000 then 'purple'
		    when sal > 2000 then 'green'
	   end the_color
  from emp

Report Attributes > Column Attributes for “SAL” > Column Formatting > HTML Expression

<span style="color:#THE_COLOR#;font-weight:bold;">#SAL#</span>

Result

Example 2 - Employee Hierarchy

Query

select (level*20)-20 the_level,
        empno,ename,mgr
   from emp
connect by prior empno = mgr
  start with mgr is null

Report Attributes > Column Attributes for “ENAME” > Column Formatting > HTML Expression

<span style="padding-left:#THE_LEVEL#px;">#ENAME#</span>

Result