Navigating and Manipulating Records

TDBNavigator provides users a simple control for navigating through records in a dataset, and for manipulating records. The navigator consists of a series of buttons that enable a user to scroll forward or backward through records one at a time, go to the first record, go to the last record, insert a new record, update an existing record, post data changes, cancel data changes, delete a record, and refresh record display.

The following figure shows the navigator that appears by default when you place it on a form at design time. The navigator consists of a series of buttons that let a user navigate from one record to another in a dataset, and edit, delete, insert, and post records. The VisibleButtons property of the navigator enables you to hide or show a subset of these buttons dynamically. See Choosing Navigator Buttons to Display for more information.

The following table describes the buttons on the navigator.

TDBNavigator buttons

Button	Purpose
First	Calls the dataset's First method to set the current record to the first record.
Prior	Calls the dataset's Prior method to set the current record to the previous record.
Next	Calls the dataset's Next method to set the current record to the next record.
Last	Calls the dataset's Last method to set the current record to the last record.
Insert	Calls the dataset's Insert method to insert a new record before the current record, and set the dataset in Insert state.
Delete	Deletes the current record. If the ConfirmDelete property is True it prompts for confirmation before deleting.
Edit	Puts the dataset in Edit state so that the current record can be modified.
Post	Writes changes in the current record to the database.
Cancel	Cancels edits to the current record, and returns the dataset to Browse state.
Refresh	Clears data control display buffers, then refreshes its buffers from the physical table or query. Useful if the underlying data may have been changed by another application.

See Displaying fly-over Help for information on associating help hints with each button. See Using a Single Navigator for Multiple Datasets for information about associating a navigator with multiple datasets.