If you happen to have a record you don't need or don't find necessary in a table, you can remove that record from the table. To start, you must establish what record you want to delete. Once again, you would need a way to uniquely identify a record. For our video collection, you can use the shelf number column. Once you have located the undesired record, you can delete it. To assist you with removing a record, the DataRow class is equipped with a method named Delete. Its syntax is simply: public void Delete(); This method must be called by the record that wants to be deleted. Here is an example:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Data;
using System.Collections;

namespace VideoCollection3
{
    public class VideoCollection
    {

        . . . No Change

        public void DeleteVideo()
        {
            if (File.Exists(strFilename))
            {
                bool found = false;                
                string strShelfNumber = "AA-000";

                dsVideos.ReadXml(strFilename);

                Console.WriteLine("\nHere is the current list of videos");

                Console.WriteLine("========================================");
                Console.WriteLine("      Video Collection");
                Console.WriteLine("=========================================");
                foreach (DataRow vdo in tblVideos.Rows)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Shelf #:  {0}", vdo["ShelfNumber"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Title:    {0}", vdo["Title"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Director: {0}", vdo["Director"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("(c) Year: {0}", vdo["Year"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Length:   {0:C}", vdo["Length"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Rating:   {0}", vdo["Rating"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------------");
                }

        Console.Write("Enter the shelf number of the video you want to delete: ");
            strShelfNumber = Console.ReadLine();

                foreach (DataRow vdo in tblVideos.Rows)
                {
                    string str = (string)vdo["ShelfNumber"];

                    if (str == strShelfNumber)
                    {
                        found = true;

                Console.WriteLine("\n-----------------------------------------");
                        Console.WriteLine("Here is the video you want to delete");
                        Console.WriteLine("1. Title:    {0}", vdo["Title"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("2. Director: {0}", vdo["Director"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("3. (c) Year: {0}", vdo["Year"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("4. Length:   {0}", vdo["Length"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("5. Rating:   {0}", vdo["Rating"]);
                Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------------");

                Console.Write("Do you still want to delete this video (y/n)? ");
                        char ans = char.Parse(Console.ReadLine());

                        if ((ans == 'y') || (ans == 'Y'))
                        {
                            vdo.Delete();
                            dsVideos.WriteXml(strFilename);
                            Console.WriteLine("The video has been deleted!");
                        }
                        
                        return;
                    }
                }

                if (found == false)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("No video with that shelf number was found");
                    return;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Besides the DataRow class, the DataRowCollection class provides its own means of deleting a record from a table. To delete a record, you can call the DataRowCollection.Remove() method. Its syntax is:

public void Remove(DataRow row);

This method takes as argument a DataRow object and checks whether the table contains it. If that record exists, it gets deleted, including all of its entries for each column. Here is an example:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Data;
using System.Collections;

namespace VideoCollection3
{
    public class VideoCollection
    {

        . . . No Change

        public void DeleteVideo()
        {
            if (File.Exists(strFilename))
            {
                bool found = false;                
                string strShelfNumber = "AA-000";

                dsVideos.ReadXml(strFilename);

                Console.WriteLine("\nHere is the current list of videos");

                Console.WriteLine("========================================");
                Console.WriteLine("      Video Collection");
                Console.WriteLine("=========================================");
                foreach (DataRow vdo in tblVideos.Rows)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Shelf #:  {0}", vdo["ShelfNumber"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Title:    {0}", vdo["Title"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Director: {0}", vdo["Director"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("(c) Year: {0}", vdo["Year"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Length:   {0:C}", vdo["Length"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("Rating:   {0}", vdo["Rating"]);
                    Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------------");
                }

        Console.Write("Enter the shelf number of the video you want to delete: ");
        strShelfNumber = Console.ReadLine();

                foreach (DataRow vdo in tblVideos.Rows)
                {
                    string str = (string)vdo["ShelfNumber"];

                    if (str == strShelfNumber)
                    {
                        found = true;

                Console.WriteLine("\n-----------------------------------------");
                        Console.WriteLine("Here is the video you want to delete");
                        Console.WriteLine("1. Title:    {0}", vdo["Title"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("2. Director: {0}", vdo["Director"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("3. (c) Year: {0}", vdo["Year"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("4. Length:   {0}", vdo["Length"]);
                        Console.WriteLine("5. Rating:   {0}", vdo["Rating"]);
                Console.WriteLine("-----------------------------------------");

                Console.Write("Do you still want to delete this video (y/n)? ");
                        char ans = char.Parse(Console.ReadLine());

                        if ((ans == 'y') || (ans == 'Y'))
                        {
                            tblVideos.Rows.Remove(vdo);
                            dsVideos.WriteXml(strFilename);
                            Console.WriteLine("The video has been deleted!");
                        }
                        
                        return;
                    }
                }

                if (found == false)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("No video with that shelf number was found");
                    return;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

When calling the DataRowCollection.Remove() method, you must pass an exact identification of the record. If you don't have that identification, you can delete a record based on its index. To do this, you would call the DataRowCollection.RemoveAt() method. Its syntax is:

public void RemoveAt(int index);

This method takes as argument the index of the record you want to delete. If a record with that index exists, it would be deleted.

To delete all records of a table, call the DataRowCollection.Clear() method. Its syntax is:

public void Clear();

This method is used to clear the table of all records.