📒Designing Dynamic Inline Help Text

🚩Introduction 

• Oracle APEX provides Inline Help Text as an effective way to guide users by explaining page items, validations, and actions directly within the application interface. While static help text is useful, real-world applications often require help content to change dynamically based on user input, application state, or business logic.

• This blog explores how to implement Dynamic Inline Help Text in Oracle APEX page items, enabling developers to deliver more contextual, responsive, and user-friendly guidance by driving help content from database queries, conditions, and runtime behavior.

📑 Why Dynamic Inline Help Text Is Needed

Static inline help in Oracle APEX is helpful for basic guidance, but Dynamic Inline Help Text becomes essential when:

• Help content must change based on user input, selected values, or form state

• Different user roles require different levels of guidance or instructions

• Business rules determine what information or warnings should be shown

• Field behavior depends on other fields (conditional or cascading logic)

• Validation messages need to be more descriptive and data-aware

• Multi-tenant or multi-language applications require contextualized help

• Maintenance effort must be reduced by avoiding hardcoded help messages

👉 Steps to Design the Dynamic Inline Help Text in Oracle APEX.

We will be designing these inline help text dynamically for the validation purpose in th blog using Javascript. 

Step 1: 

In the page designer, create a page item and change the type to Text Field (it works for any type). For this tutorial we will be using the Text Field page item.

Step 2: 

Create the dynamic action of type loose focus for the created page item and create the true action of type Execute Javascript Code.

Step 3: 

In the Execute Javascipt Code true action, paste the code code below to perform the client side  validation for the page item and display the error text in the inline help text placeholder.

 // Execute Javascript Code 
 
var input = apex.item("P59_TEXT").getValue(); // Page Item

if (input == "") {
  attachInlineHelpTxt(
    "P59_TEXT",
    ""
  );
}
else if (input <= 0) {
  attachInlineHelpTxt(
    "P59_TEXT",
    "<span style='color:red;font-weight:bold;'>Number Should be > 0</span>"
  );
}
else if (input > 0 && input < 1000) {
  attachInlineHelpTxt(
    "P59_TEXT",
    "You Entered : <span>" +
    apex.item("P59_TEXT").getValue() +
    "</span>"
  );
}
else if (input >= 1000) {
  attachInlineHelpTxt(
    "P59_TEXT",
    "You Entered : <span style='color:red;font-weight:bold;'>" +
    apex.item("P59_TEXT").getValue() +
    "</span>"
  );
}
else {
  attachInlineHelpTxt(
    "P59_TEXT",
    "<span style='color:red;font-weight:bold;'>Invalid Number</span>"
  );
}

 The Validation includes, checking whether the entered value was

• Less than zero (negative value).
• Valid Number.
• Value >= 1000 - highlight the value

Step 4: 

Now create the javascript function to create the dynamic inline help text and attach that to the page item in the Function and Global Variable Declartion Section in the page properties. 

Page -> Properties -> Function and Global Variable Declaration

  //Function and Global Variable Declaration
  
  function attachInlineHelpTxt(targetNode, helpText) {  
  if (!document.getElementById(targetNode + "_inline_help")) {   
      
      const inlineHelp = document.createElement("span");
      inlineHelp.className = "t-Form-inlineHelp";
      inlineHelp.innerHTML = 
        "<span id=" + 
        targetNode + 
        "_inline_help></span>";

      const errorPlaceholder = 
        document.getElementById(targetNode + "_error_placeholder"); 

      if (errorPlaceholder) {
        errorPlaceholder.parentNode.insertBefore(inlineHelp, errorPlaceholder); 
      }        
  } 

  document.getElementById(targetNode + "_inline_help").innerHTML = helpText;
}

Step 5: 

Now save and run the page, when entering negative values, the error message will be shown inline with the page item. Like-wise for invalid number and number greater than 1000, you will get the message.

You can watch the live demo in my youtube channel 👉 Thanigai Solutions

🔥 Conclusion

Thus, implementing Dynamic Inline Help Text in Oracle APEX can be effectively achieved using built-in item properties, Dynamic Actions, and lightweight JavaScript, without relying on complex validations or intrusive UI customizations. By delivering context-aware guidance based on user input, business rules, or application state, developers can overcome the limitations of static help text and provide meaningful assistance exactly when it’s needed.

This approach enables a more intuitive and user-centric interaction model that fits seamlessly into enterprise-grade applications. It reduces user errors, improves form clarity, and enhances overall usability—while keeping Oracle APEX applications clean, scalable, and easy to maintain, empowering users to complete tasks with greater confidence and efficiency.