Building a Dynamic Vertical Timeline in Oracle APEX

A timeline is a simple but powerful way to present a person’s activities, career history, transactions, or important events in chronological order.

While working with Oracle APEX, I wanted to create a dynamic vertical timeline where timeline entries are generated directly from database records instead of manually creating HTML for every event.

Recently, I worked on implementing a dynamic vertical timeline in Oracle APEX using a Dynamic Content region. Instead of creating timeline cards manually, the timeline is generated dynamically from database records using PL/SQL, SQL, HTML, and CSS.

This approach makes the timeline reusable and data-driven.

Step 1: Create a Dynamic Content Region

In Oracle APEX, create a region with:

Region Type → Dynamic Content

The Dynamic Content region allows us to generate HTML dynamically using PL/SQL.

Instead of returning static HTML, we can loop through database records and build the timeline item by item.

Step 2: Prepare the SQL Query

If the table already exists, prepare a query that returns all the information required by the timeline (i.e step 3 ).

If the table does not exist, create a table first so you can test the timeline implementation.

For example:

CREATE TABLE employee_activities (
    activity_id        NUMBER GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY,
    employee_id        NUMBER,
    activity_date      DATE,
    activity_name      VARCHAR2(100),
    activity_type      VARCHAR2(50),
    organization_name  VARCHAR2(200),
    remarks            VARCHAR2(500)
);

Then insert some sample records:

INSERT INTO employee_activities (
    employee_id,
    activity_date,
    activity_name,
    activity_type,
    organization_name,
    remarks
)
VALUES (
    101,
    DATE '2024-01-01',
    'Joining',
    'JOINING',
    'Head Office',
    'Joined the organization'
);

Step 3: Prepare the SQL Query

First, I prepared a query that returns all the information required by the timeline.

A simplified example:

SELECT
    a.activity_date AS item_date,

    TO_CHAR(
        a.activity_date,
        'DD-Mon-YYYY'
    ) AS item_date_display,
    a.activity_name AS item_name,
    CASE
        WHEN a.activity_type = 'JOINING'
            THEN 'fa fa-user-plus'
        WHEN a.activity_type = 'PROMOTION'
            THEN 'fa fa-arrow-up'
        WHEN a.activity_type = 'TRANSFER'
            THEN 'fa fa-exchange'
        WHEN a.activity_type = 'TRAINING'
            THEN 'fa fa-book'
        ELSE
            'fa fa-history'
    END AS item_icon,
    'Activity' AS item_type,
    a.organization_name AS item_subtitle,
    a.remarks AS item_details
FROM table_name a
WHERE a.id = :P1_id
ORDER BY a.activity_date DESC;

The important idea here is to create a standard structure for every timeline record.

Step 4: Generate HTML Using PL/SQL

Now the Dynamic Content region can loop through the query results and generate the HTML and add code as per requirement in dynamic content pl/sql.

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For example:

DECLARE
    l_html CLOB;
BEGIN

    l_html := '<div class="timeline">';
    FOR r IN (
        SELECT
            activity_date,
            activity_name,
            activity_type,
            organization_name,
            remarks
        FROM employee_activities
        WHERE employee_id = :P10_EMPLOYEE_ID
        ORDER BY activity_date DESC
    )
    LOOP
        l_html := l_html ||
            '<div class="timeline-item">' ||
                '<div class="timeline-icon">' ||
                    CASE
                        WHEN r.activity_type = 'JOINING'
                            THEN '<i class="fa fa-user-plus"></i>'
                        WHEN r.activity_type = 'PROMOTION'
                            THEN '<i class="fa fa-arrow-up"></i>'
                        WHEN r.activity_type = 'TRANSFER'
                            THEN '<i class="fa fa-exchange"></i>'
                        WHEN r.activity_type = 'TRAINING'
                            THEN '<i class="fa fa-book"></i>'
                        ELSE
                            '<i class="fa fa-history"></i>'
                    END ||
                '</div>' ||
                '<div class="timeline-content">' ||
                    '<div class="timeline-date">' ||
                        TO_CHAR(
                            r.activity_date,
                            'DD-Mon-YYYY'
                        ) ||
                    '</div>' ||
                    '<h3>' ||
                        apex_escape.html(r.activity_name) ||
                    '</h3>' ||
                    '<h4>' ||
                        apex_escape.html(r.organization_name) ||
                    '</h4>' ||
                    '<p>' ||
                        apex_escape.html(r.remarks) ||
                    '</p>' ||
                '</div>' ||
            '</div>';
    END LOOP;
    l_html := l_html || '</div>';
    RETURN l_html;
END;

Step 5: Add CSS

Once the HTML is generated, CSS is used to create the visual timeline.Add css as per requirement.

A simplified example:

.timeline {
    position: relative;
    max-width: 900px;
    margin: auto;
    padding: 30px 20px;
}

Overall Architecture

The implementation can be summarized as:

Database Records

↓

SQL Query

↓

PL/SQL Loop

↓

Dynamic HTML

↓

APEX Dynamic Content

↓

CSS

↓

Vertical Timeline UI