Step 3: Create a Simple Data-Bound Form

Once you've created a Command object in a Data Environment designer to serve as a data source, you can easily create a data-bound form by dragging the Command object onto a blank form. You can then add a mechanism for navigating through the records that are displayed.

In this topic, you'll create a form that displays records from the Phone table in the Employees sample database. Then you'll create command buttons for moving to the next or previous record.

To create a simple data-bound form

Drag a Command object from the Data Environment designer to a blank form.
Create Select Menu Options that lets you navigate through records.

Drag Command Object from Data Environment Designer to a Blank Form

Much of the tedium of creating a data-bound form can be avoided in Visual Basic by dragging a Command object from the Data Environment designer to the form. Visual Basic automatically creates text box controls to display data from the Command object's recordset and sets data properties that bind the controls to fields in the recordset.

For example, to create a form that displays data from the Phone table in the Employees sample database follow the steps in the "Create a Data Environment Command Object" topic to create an EmployeesTable command. Then simply drag the Command object (EmployeesTable) from the Data Environment designer onto a blank form. To view both the form and data environment simultaneously so you can perform the drag operation, select Tile Horizontally, Tile Vertically, or Cascade from the Window menu.

Create Menu Options to Navigate through Records

By basing a data-bound form on a data environment Command object's recordset, you can easily create Next and Previous options on a Menu that let you navigate through records. Each menu option requires the following lines of code.

For example, to create a Next Menu option for the form that displays Employees records, add a Select Menu which includes the Next, Previous, First, and Last options to the form. Change Next Menu's Caption property to Next and its Name propery to mnuNext. Then add the following code to menu’s mnuNext_Click event procedure:

datEmployeesEnvironment.rsEmployeesTable.MoveNext
IF datEmployeesEnvironment.rsEmployeesTable.EOF then
   datEmployeesEnvironment.rsEmployeesTable.MoveFirst
END IF

The code uses the MoveNext method of the EmployeesTable command's underlying recordset, rsEmployeesTable. It refers to the recordset as a property of the command's data environment designer, datEmployeesEnvironment.

Similarly, you can create a Previous Menu Option by adding a Previous Menu Option of the Select Menu to the form and change its Caption property to Previous and its Name property to mnuPrev. Then add the following code to the menu’s mnuPrev_Click event procedure:

datEmployeesEnvironment.rsEmployeesTable.MovePrevious
IF datEmployeesEnvironment.rsEmployeesTable.BOF then
   datEmployeesEnvironment.rsEmployeesTable.MoveLast
END IF

When you run the form, Visual Basic displays the records in the Employees table and lets you move forward and backward through the recordset by using the Select Menu.

Note: Use the same coding methods for the First and Last record options on the Select Menu.