APEX

Most government and public sector work now mandates the inclusion of various forms of metadata located in the page header, such as [Dublin Core|http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5013.txt], keywords and PICS information. Usually this information is included as name/value pairs using [<meta>|http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4.2] elements.

I wondered what techniques are being used in APEX to inject this (and other) information into the page header, when it needs to be determined dynamically from parameter values and retrieved from the database?

In a recent Oracle Portal project this proved less straightforward than hoped. Convinced things would prove easier in APEX I've considered 3 approaches so far:

1. If the elements are fixed for the page, the metadata elements can of course simply be typed into the page HTML Header (why doesn't Portal have this?!)

2. With a small number of fixed elements with dynamic content, include e.g. <meta name="keywords" value="&KEYWORDS." /> elements in the HTML Header or page template header, and generate the substitution value using application items and computations.

3. For a variable number of elements or other more complex scenarios, move the </head> tag into the page template body ([still find the division of the page template definition baffling|http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=1289074&#1289074]) and put a region position placeholder (e.g. #REGION_POSITION_04#) before </head>. A template-less PL/SQL Dynamic Content region can now be set at this display point to call whatever PL/SQL is necessary to inject elements using htp.meta or htp.p.

Any other thoughts?

Edited by: fac586 on Oct 9, 2008 9:26 PM

Just discovered #REGION_POSITION_04# is substituted in the page definition header area. Said I found that confusing...