Invoicing in Delphi: Show Me the Money - Building the Application Interface

Start a new project in Delphi and add seven forms to it. Save the units with the following names:

Unit  Name    Save as...
 unit1           invmain
 unit2           newinv
 unit3           settings
 unit4           stats
 unit5           viewchange
 unit6           viewclients
 unit7           about

Finally save the project as: invoicing. Now close all other forms except the one saved as invmain, because that is the one that we need to start developing first. Once you have Form1 in front of you, from the Standard tab drop the Mainmenu component on the form. Double click on it and add the following menu items:

A file with a submenu item called Exit. Double click on the exit submenu item and add the following code:

procedure TForm1.Exit1Click(Sender: TObject); 
begin
  close; 
end;

Now create the second menu item, called Clients, with a submenu item called Manage Clients. Double click on it and add the following code:

procedure TForm1.ViewAllClients1Click(Sender: TObject); 
begin 
  form6.show; 
end;

Create the third menu item and call it Tools. Then add the following submenu items:

Settings

Double click on the above submenu item and add the following code:

procedure TForm1.Settings1Click(Sender: TObject); 
begin 
  form3.show 
end;

Statistics

Double click on the above submenu item and add the following code:

procedure TForm1.Statistics1Click(Sender: TObject); 
begin 
  form4.show; 
end;

Then create the final menu item called Help, and add a submenu item called About. Double click on it and add the following code:

procedure TForm1.About1Click(Sender: TObject); 
begin 
  form7.show; 
end;

That's it for the menu items. Now on the form add a panel and align it to "all top." Put on the panel the following components:

Two radio buttons - Name them rb1 and rb2 respectively.Then give them the captions: Search by Invoice Name and Search by Invoice Number.

Tedit - Name the edit "edsearch." Clear the text property if there is any text in it.

Button - name the button "btnsearch" and add the caption "Search."

Save your work. Next, from the Data Controls tab add the database grid and set its align property to all client. Double click on the grid and the column property editor should come up. Add five columns and give them the following captions:

Invoice Number
Invoice Name
Invoice Date
Status

You add captions by going to the title property of each column.

Next, we add another panel and set its align property to "alBottom." On this panel add the following widgets:

• Two static text -- with caption names "Total Invoices" and "Current Invoice #."
  
• Two labels
  
• Three buttons, named btnDelete, btnAddInv and btnExit respectively. 

 To the three buttons, add the following code, in the order given:

btnDelete:

procedure TForm1.btndeleteClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
  if ado1.RecordCount > 0 then 
  begin
    ado1.Delete;
  end
  else
    showmessage('No invoices to delete'); 
end;

btnAddInv:

procedure TForm1.btnAddInvClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
  ado1.Active:=false;
  //form1.ado1.TableName:='';
  form2.show;
end;

btnExit:

procedure TForm1.btnExitClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
  close;
end;

Then finally drop a datasource component (name it d1) from the Data Access tab and an ADO table component (name it ado1) from the Ado Tab. Set form1's caption to Invoice Manager. That completes the design on the first form. Your form should look something like this:

Next: Finished Code >>
 

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