I am trying to consume my own file REST service in Oracle Apex (v.19.2) using apex_web_service.make_rest_request in a WITH_PLSQL call as the Classic Report source.
My POST and GET REST calls works fine, but I fail to define the parameters for the 'Download BLOB' column in my Classic Report, such that users can download files.
I am currently clueless to what to do...
(I have no problems with all other processes with consuming numerous other ORDS REST services, it is just the files download that is the problem). Thanks in Advance!
The declarative BLOB download in classic (or interactive) reports do not work for reports on top of Web Source Modules. The reason is that the BLOB would first need to be downloaded to the APEX engine, and from there to your browser - which is pretty inefficient.
In most cases, there are separate REST endpoints to download the actual file contents. If these endpoints can be accessed from the browser, I would simply build a Link Column, in which the link to the "file download" button is constructed. When the end user clicks that link, the browser downloads the file, bypassing APEX.
If that does not work and you need to download the file to APEX, and from there to the browser, you would need to use custom PL/SQL code. This article illustrates this nicely (see the "Download" section): https://blogs.oracle.com/oraclemagazine/better-file-storage-in-oracle-cloud
I hope this helps