Programming assignment #8

Developing a simple contact-information database program

Purpose:

We would like to define and implement a ContactInfo class and use objects of this ContactInfo class to store and process the contact information of people. You will need to use the DateType class and the C++ string class in the implementation of a ContactInfo class. We’ll then use this ContactInfo class as a building block in implementing a simple contact information database program.

What to do:

1. Download the basic code framework: Download this zip file and unzip it to get a project containing the basic code to work on. You will also find DateType.h and DateType.cpp included in it. You should replace these tow files with your own version of DateType.h and DateType.cpp instead.
2. Understand the design of the ContactInfo class: Look at the interface (i.e. the member functions and data members) of the ContactInfo class as defined and commented in ContactInfo.h to understand what kind of data are stored in a ContactInfo object and what kind of services (member functions) a ContactInfo object can do for you.
3. Implement the of the ContactInfo class: ContactInfo.cpp contains the implementation details of the member functions of the ContactInfo class. The implementation there is not completed yet. You have to fill in code to complete the implementation of these member functions according to the specification comments of these member functions in ContactInfo.h. Regarding the implementations of the relational operator > and others like < and <=, we define a total order over ContactInfo objects by defining that C1 > C2 is true if and only if either we have C1.CompareFullName (C2) = = GREATER or we have C1.SameFullName (C2) = = true and C1.CompareBirthday (C2) = = GREATER.
4. Test the implementation of your ContactInfo class: The main function in ContactTest.cpp given to you is intended as the test ground for testing whether your implementation of the ContactInfo class is sound. At the moment, we have a vector of ContactInfo objects (initialized to hold 5 ContactInfo objects) to serve as a contact-information database. The code in the main function then does some basic operations such as reading the contact information of 5 persons into the database, display the contact information of these people from the database, search the database for the contact information of persons of a particular name, and search the database to find out the contact information of all people born on a particular date. You should add similar code to extensively test your implementation in Step 3 above.
5. Incorporate and revise the functions mergeTwoSortedVectors and mergeSort similar to what you did in Programming #2 or #5 into ContactTest.cpp to provide the capability of sorting ContactInfo objects instead of double values or dateType objects: First, make a copy of these two functions from programming #2 or #5 into ContactTest.cpp in this project. Modify the prototype bool mergeTwoSortedVectors(vector<double> & vecA, vector<double> & vecB, vector<double> & vecC) to bool mergeTwoSortedVectors(vector< ContactInfo e> & vecA, vector< ContactInfo > & vecB, vector< ContactInfo e > & vecC) and modify the implementation so that it can merge two sorted vectors of ContactInfo objects. Modify the prototype of bool mergeSort(vector<double> & vecToSort) to bool mergeSort(vector< ContactInfo > & vecToSort) and modify the implementation so that it can sort a vector of ContactInfo objects. Add code in the main function to test and verify that the newly modified functions can work well for merging and sorting ContactInfo objects.
6. Implement your own very simple contact information database program: Make a copy of ContactTest.cpp in the project folder and name it ContactDB.cpp. Under Visual studio, remove ContactTest.cpp from the project and add ContactDB.cpp into the project. Then totally rewrite the main function in ContactDB.cpp to provide a menu serving as a simple database user interface similar to what you did for Program#5. See the details in the following.
7. Extensively test all the services provided by your program.

Detailed specification of the main function in ContactDB.cpp:

Overview: Your main function in Contact.cpp should provide services to read dates from the keyboard or files, save the dates into files, search for dates within a given range of dates, and sort dates in order. To accomplish these purposes, in the main function we’ll use a vector<ContactInfo> object as a container in the main memory to store and manage the date information by using various operators and member functions of the ContactInfo class. See more details below.

Key data structures:

· To dynamically store the information of dates, you should declare in your main function ” vector<ContactInfo> contactDB; ” to create a local vector for storing ContactInfo objects. You should also declare in your main function a local ContactInfo object like aContact, local string objects like “ string aFirstName, aLAstName;” and DateType objects like “ DateType dBegin, dEnd; ” for storing temporary date information.

· Add the line #include <fstream> in the beginning of the .cpp file for file I/O support. In the main function, you should declare a character array char filename[20] for storing the file name given by the user. You should declare two file handles ifstream fin; and ofstream fout; for file input/output purposes respectively. You should also declare in your main function local integer variable “ int numContsctInfoRecords; ” for temporarily storing the information of the number of date records involved in the file I/O.

Service menu: The main function should set up a loop that would repeatedly display a menu to prompt the user to choose one of the following services:

• K: to read a ContactInfo object manually Keyed in by the user and store it (i.e. push_back) in the end of the vector contactDB,
• R: to clear the vector contactDB into an empty vector first and then Read ContactInfo objects from a file specified by the users into the vector contactDB,
• D: to Display the ContactInfo objects currently stored in the vector contactDB to the screen,
• M: to Modify one of the ContactInfo objects by reading a new ContactInfo object from the keyboard to overwrite the contents of an existing ContactInfo object (specified by the user) in the vector contactDB,
• X: to eXclude one of the ContactInfo objects by removing it from the vector contactDB,
• W: to Write the ContactInfo objects currently stored in the vector contactDB into a file specified by the user,
• B to Find and display ContactInfo objects with Birthdays falling between two dates specified by the user,
• N to Find and display ContactInfo objects with the full Name given by the user,
• S: to Sort the ContactInfo objects currently stored in the vector contactDB in order,
• Q: to Quit the program.

Implementation of the services: On each iteration of that loop, the program should read the user’s choice and use a switch statement to do things according to the choice:

• If the choice is ‘K’: the program should ask the local ContactInfo object aContact to read in a new record of contact information (i.e. ” cin >> aContact; ” ) and then add the ContactInfo object into the end of the vector contactDB (i.e. ” contactDB.push_back(aContact); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘R’: the program should ask the user to provide the name (less than 20 characters) of an input file (e.g. dates.txt), and read the file name into a character array char filename[20] (i.e. ” cin >> filename; ” ). The program should then open that file through the input file object fin (i.e. ” fin.open(filename ); ” ) and read the first integer from the file into numContsctInfoRecords (i.e. ” fin >> numContsctInfoRecords; ”), and the program should check to make sure this number is non-negative. The program should clear contactDB (i.e. ” contactDB.clear( ); ” ) to an empty vector, and then set up a loop that iterates for numContsctInfoRecords iterations to repeatedly read in a ContactInfo object from the file into the local DateType object date (i.e. ” fin >> date; ” ) and then add the date into the end of the vector contactDB (i.e. ” contactDB.push_back(date); ” ). After the loop is finished, the program should close that file (i.e. ” fin.close( ); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘D’: the program should set up a loop to display each element contactDB [i] in the vector contactDB (i.e. ” cout << dateDB[i] ; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘M’: the program should ask the user the index i of the date in contactDB[i] he/she wants to modify, read the index as an integer from the user, check to make sure i is non-negative and less than contactDB.size( ), and read the new contact information into contactDB[i] (i.e. ” cin >> contactDB[i] ; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘X’: the program should ask the user the index i of the date in contactDB[i] he/she wants to exclude, read the index as an integer from the user, check to make sure i is non-negative and less than contactDB.size( ), and then erase the object from the vector by calling the erase method (i.e. ” contactDB.erase(contactDB.begin( )+ i; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘W’: the program should ask the user to provide the name (less than 20 characters) of an output file (e.g. dates.txt), and read the file name into a character array char filename[20]. The program should then open that file through the output file object fout (i.e. ” fout.open(filename ); ” ) and write the size of contactDB into the file (i.e. ” fout << contactDB.size( ); ”). The program should then set up a loop that iterates for contactDB.size( ) iterations to repeatedly write each element contactDB[i] into the file (i.e. ” fout << contactDB[i]); ” ). After the loop is finished, the program should close that file (i.e. ” fout.close( ); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘N’, the program should ask the user to provide the first name and the last name (i.e. ” cin >> dBegin; ” and ” cin >> dEnd; ” ), and then the program should set up a loop to check each element contactDB[i] in the vector contactDB and display the contents of contactDB[i] if the birthday field of contactDB[i] is within the range (i.e. if ” contactDB[i].CompareBirthday( dBegin)!= LESS && contactDB[i].CompareBirthday( dEnd)!= GREATER is true).
• If the choice is ‘B’, the program should ask the user to provide the beginning date and the ending date of the date range (i.e. ” cin >> aFirstName; ” and ” cin >> aLastName; ” ), and then the program should set up a loop to check each element contactDB[i] in the vector contactDB and display the contents of contactDB[i] if contactDB[i] has the same first name and the last name (i.e. if ” contactDB[i].SameFullName(aFirsttName, aLastName) = = true).
• If the choice is ‘S’, the program should call the mergeSort function sort the dates in order (i.e. ” mergeSort(contactDB ); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘Q’, the program will output a thank-you message, exit the loop, and end the program.

Reference:

· Vector class: Member Functions with no iterators used:

back	Returns a reference to the last element of the vector.
capacity	Returns the number of elements that the vector could contain without allocating more storage.
clear	Erases the elements of the vector.
empty	Tests if the vector container is empty.
front	Returns a reference to the first element in a vector.
max_size	Returns the maximum length of the vector.
pop_back	Deletes the element at the end of the vector.
push_back	Add an element to the end of the vector.
resize	Specifies a new size for a vector.
reserve	Reserves a minimum length of storage for a vector object.
size	Returns the number of elements in the vector.
swap	Exchanges the elements of two vectors.
vector	Constructs a vector of a specific size or with elements of a specific value or with a specific allocator or as a copy of some other vector.

· Vector class: Member Functions with iterators used:

begin	Returns a random-access iterator to the first element in the container.
end	Returns a random-access iterator that points just beyond the end of the vector.
erase	Removes an element or a range of elements in a vector from specified positions.
insert	Inserts an element or a number of elements into the vector at a specified position.

· See MSDN on all the vector class members here