A basic appointment-information management program

Purpose:

This is essentially the enhanced version of Programming #5A. Instead of a database for managing DateType objects regarding dates, here we would like to have a database for managing appointments. For this purpose, we need to define and implement an Appointment class and use objects of this Appointment class to store and process the appointment information of people. You will need to use the DateType class and the C++ string class in the implementation of an Appointment class. We’ll then use this Appointment class as a building block in implementing a simple appointment 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 should copy and paste your own DateType.h and DateType.cpp files from Programming #2 to replace the empty DateType.h and DateType.cpp files included in it.
2. Understand the design of the Appointment class: Look at the interface (i.e. the member functions and data members) of the Appointment class as defined and commented in Appointment.h to understand what kind of data are stored in a Appointment object and what kind of services (member functions) an Appointment object can do for you.
3. Complete the implementation of the Appointment class: Appointment.cpp contains the implementation details of the member functions of the Appointment class. The implementation there is not completed yet. You have to fill in code in Appointment.cpp to complete the implementation of these member functions according to the specification comments of these member functions in Appointment.h. For example, you need to implement the relational operator > and others like < and <= so that we can compare Appointment objects. For any two Appointment objects, we consider C1 < C2 as true when the appointment date recorded in C1 is less than that in C2. If C1 and C2 have the same appointment day, then the order of C1 and C2 is determined based on the alphabetical order of their full names (i.e. comparing the last name first and then comparing the first name if they happen to have the same last name). In other words, C1 < C2 is true either (i) when the logic expression C1.CompareAppointment (C2) = = GREATER is true or (ii) when the logic expression C1.SameAppointmentDay (C2) = = true && C1.CompareFullName (C2) = = GREATER is true.
4. Test the implementation of your Appointment class: The main function in AppointmentTest.cpp given to you is intended as the test ground for testing whether your implementation of the Appointment class is sound. At the moment, we have a vector of Appointment objects (initialized to hold 5 Appointment objects) to serve as a appointment-information database. The code in the main function then does some basic operations such as reading the appointment information of 5 persons into the database, display the appointment information of these people from the database, search the database for the appointment information of persons of a particular name, and search the database to find out the appointment 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 #3 and #5A into AppointmentTest.cpp to provide the capability of sorting a vector of Appointment objects instead of a vector of double values: First, make a copy of those two functions from programming #3 or #5A into AppointmentTest.cpp in this project. Modify the prototype bool mergeTwoSortedVectors(vector<double> & vecA, vector<double> & vecB, vector<double> & vecC) to bool mergeTwoSortedVectors(vector< Appointment > & vecA, vector< Appointment > & vecB, vector< Appointment > & vecC) and modify the implementation so that it can merge two sorted vectors of Appointment objects. Modify the prototype of bool mergeSort(vector<double> & vecToSort) to bool mergeSort(vector< Appointment > & vecToSort) and modify the implementation so that it can sort a vector of Appointment objects. Add your own code in the main function to create a vector of Appointment objects and then test to verify that the newly modified functions can work well for merging and sorting Appointment objects.
6. Implement your own very simple appointment information database program in AppointmentDB.cpp: After you are sure your new implementation of the merge sort stuff does work, make a copy of AppointmentTest.cpp in the project folder and name it AppointmentDB.cpp. Under Visual studio, remove AppointmentTest.cpp from the project and add AppointmentDB.cpp into the project. Then totally rewrite the main function in AppointmentDB.cpp to provide a menu serving as a simple database user interface similar to what you did for Program#5A. Please carefully examine the details provided in the section below on “Detailed specification of the main function in AppointmentDB.cpp”.
7. Testing and submission: Extensively test all the services provided by your program. When you are sure things are working perfectly, you are done, submit all your source code files (all .h and .cpp files) and the self-evaluation report as a zip file under Canvas.

Detailed specification of the main function in AppointmentDB.cpp:

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

Key data structures:

· To dynamically store the information of appointments, you should declare in your main function ” vector<Appointment> appointmentDB; ” to create a local vector for storing Appointment objects. You should also declare in your main function a local Appointment object like aAppointment, 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 string string filename 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 numAppointmentRecords; ” 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 an Appointment object manually Keyed in by the user and store it (i.e. push_back) in the end of the vector appointmentDB,
• R: to clear the vector appointmentDB into an empty vector first and then Read information of Appointment objects from a file specified by the users into the vector appointmentDB,
• D: to Display all the Appointment objects currently stored in the vector appointmentDB to the screen,
• M: to Modify one of the Appointment objects by reading a new Appointment object from the keyboard to overwrite the contents of an existing Appointment object (specified by the user) in the vector appointmentDB,
• X: to eXclude one of the Appointment objects by removing it from the vector appointmentDB,
• W: to Write the Appointment objects currently stored in the vector appointmentDB into a file specified by the user,
• A to Find and display Appointment objects with appointment days falling between two dates specified by the user,
• E to Find and display Appointment objects with appointment days within the same week of the date specified by the user,
• N to Find and display Appointment objects with the full Name given by the user,
• S: to Sort the Appointment objects currently stored in the vector appointmentDB 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 Appointment object aAppointment to read in a new record of appointment information (i.e. ” cin >> aAppointment; ” ) and then add the Appointment object into the end of the vector appointmentDB (i.e. ” appointmentDB.push_back(aAppointment); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘R’: the program should ask the user to provide the name of an input file (e.g. dates.txt), and read the file name into the string variable filename (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 umAppointmentRecords (i.e. ” fin >> umAppointmentRecords; ”), and the program should check to make sure this number is non-negative. The program should clear appointmentDB (i.e. ” appointmentDB.clear( ); ” ) to an empty vector, and then set up a loop that iterates for umAppointmentRecords iterations to repeatedly read in a Appointment object from the file into the local Appointment object aAppointment (i.e. ” fin >> aAppointment; ” ) and then add the appointment into the end of the vector appointmentDB (i.e. ” appointmentDB.push_back(aAppointment); ” ). 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 appointmentDB [i] in the vector appointmentDB (i.e. ” cout << appointmentDB[i] ; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘M’: the program should ask the user the index i of the date in appointmentDB[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 appointmentDB.size( ), and read the new appointment information into appointmentDB[i] (i.e. ” cin >> appointmentDB[i] ; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘X’: the program should ask the user the index i of the date in appointmentDB[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 appointmentDB.size( ), and then erase the object from the vector by calling the erase method (i.e. ” appointmentDB.erase(appointmentDB.begin( )+ i; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘W’: the program should ask the user to provide the name of an output file (e.g. appointments.txt), and read the file name into a string variable filename (i.e. ” cin >> filename; ” ). The program should then open that file through the output file object fout (i.e. ” fout.open(filename ); ” ) and write the size of appointmentDB into the file (i.e. ” fout << appointmentDB.size( ); ”). The program should then set up a loop that iterates for appointmentDB.size( ) iterations to repeatedly write each element appointmentDB[i] into the file (i.e. ” fout << appointmentDB[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 >> aFirstName; ” and ” cin >> aLastName; ” ), and then the program should set up a loop to check each element appointmentDB[i] in the vector appointmentDB and display the contents of appointmentDB[i] if appointmentDB[i] has the same first name and the last name (i.e. if ” appointmentDB[i].SameFullName(aFirsttName, aLastName) = = true).
• If the choice is ‘A’, the program should ask the user to provide the beginning date and the ending date of the date range (i.e. ” cin >> dBegin; ” and ” cin >> dEnd; ” ), and then the program should set up a loop to check each element appointmentDB[i] in the vector appointmentDB and display the contents of appointmentDB[i] if the appointment date of appointmentDB[i] is within the range (i.e. if ” appointmentDB[i].CompareAppointmentDay( dBegin)!= LESS && appointmentDB[i].CompareAppointmentDay( dEnd)!= GREATER is true).
• If the choice is ‘E’, the program should ask the user to provide the date d, and then the program should set up a loop to check each element appointmentDB[i] in the vector appointmentDB and display the contents of appointmentDB[i] if the appointment falls within the same week of d.
1. For this assignment, let’s use the convention that counts Sunday as the first day of the week and Saturday as the last day of the week. To accomplish the task of option ‘E’, you need to first determine the beginning date dBegin (a Sunday) and the ending date dEnd (a Saturday) of the week that contains the date d.
2. Note that you can have Sunday 5/3/2015 as a reference date. Store 5/3/2015 in a date dReference and you can calculate the number of days between d and 5/3/2015 as dReference – d. You can then easily find out the beginning date dBegin (a Sunday) and the ending date dEnd (a Saturday) of the week that contains the date d according to the value of (dReference – d )%7. (Think about it.)
3. For example, (dReference – d )%7 equals 3 when d is 5/20/2015. Therefore dBegin should equal d-3, which is Sunday 5/17/2015, while dEnd should equal dBegin +6, which is Saturday 5/23/2015.
• If the choice is ‘S’, the program should call the mergeSort function sort the dates in order (i.e. ” mergeSort(appointmentDB ); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘Q’, the program will output a thank-you message, exit the loop, and end the program.

Reference:

You can click the individual member function below to access the related sample code in the online MSDN documents.

· Vector class: Non-iterator member functions (no iterators used):

vector	Constructs a vector of a specific size or with elements of a specific value or as a copy of some other vector.
size	Returns the number of elements in the vector.
clear	Erases the elements of the vector.
empty	Tests if the vector container is empty.
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.
swap	Exchanges the elements of two vectors.

· Vector class: iterator-related member functions (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.

· You can click this link to see the full list of the vector class members.