How to Connect Your Oracle APEX App to a REST API (with Example)

Introduction

APEX isn't just a tool for building apps over Oracle Database—it's also a powerful platform for integrating with external systems via REST APIs. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I connected an Oracle APEX app to a public REST API, pulled the data, and displayed it in a report region. This opens the door to tons of possibilities—stock data, weather feeds, payment gateways, and more.

What You’ll Learn

• How to define a Web Source Module in Oracle APEX

• How to consume a public REST API (example: JSON Placeholder)

• How to bind the REST response to a report region

• Tips for working with authentication if needed

Step 1: Choose a Public API

For this example, we’ll use the JSON Placeholder fake REST API.

Endpoint:
https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users

It returns a list of users with names, emails, and more—perfect for a demo.

Step 2: Create a Web Source Module

1. Go to Shared Components > Web Source Modules

2. Click Create > From Scratch

3. Enter a name like Users_API

4. Set the URL to: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users

5. Click Discover – APEX will parse the JSON and show the structure

6. Review the fields and click Create Web Source

Step 3: Create a Report Region

1. Create a new page → Report → Classic Report

2. Select Web Source as the data source

3. Choose the Web Source Module (Users_API)

4. Pick the columns to display (e.g., name, email, phone)

5. Run the page and see the external data load directly in your app!

Step 4: Optional – Authentication

If your API requires a key/token:

• Edit the Web Source Module

• Under Authentication, choose HTTP Header

• Add something like: Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

APEX will include this in each call automatically.

Step 5: Bonus Tips

• Use Dynamic Actions to refresh data

• Create parameterized endpoints (e.g., ?userId=1) and bind APEX items

• Use collections if you want to cache or manipulate the data locally

Final Thoughts

Connecting APEX to REST APIs unlocks powerful integration capabilities. Whether you're working with internal services or external APIs, APEX makes it easy to connect, fetch, and display data—all with minimal code.

Stay tuned for more tutorials where I’ll show how to POST data to an API and handle two-way sync!