Programming Assignment #5: Managing a vector of DateType objects

Purpose and overview:

Imagine that we want to manage a list of birthdays of your family and friends so that we can conveniently sort birthdays, search for birthdays within a given range, store the birthdays in a file, and read them from a file. To accomplish these purposes, we’ll use a vector<DateType> object as a container in the main memory to store and manage the birthday information and use various operators for the DateType class implemented in programming #3 for input, output, and comparisons of dates. In addition, we’ll also adapt the implementation of mergeTwoSortedVectors and mergeSort functions implemented in programming #2 for sorting the birthday information as a vector<DateType> object.

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Step 1. Revise the functions mergeTwoSortedVectors and mergeSort in Programming #3 to provide the capability of sorting DateType objects instead of double values:

· First, make a copy of your entire programming project for programming #3. Add a copy of DateType.h and a copy of DateType.cpp from programming #2 into this project in addition.

· Add the line #include "DateType.h " and the line #include <vector> in the beginning of the .cpp file containing the main function . Modify the prototype

bool mergeTwoSortedVectors(vector<double> & vecA, vector<double> & vecB, vector<double> & vecC)

to bool mergeTwoSortedVectors(vector<DateType> & vecA, vector< DateType > & vecB, vector< DateType > & vecC) and

modify the implementation so that it can merge two sorted vectors of DateType objects.

· Modify the prototype of

bool mergeSort(vector<double> & vecToSort)

to bool mergeSort(vector<DateType> & vecToSort) and

modify the implementation so that it can sort a vector of DateType objects.

· Modify the main function so that the user can enter dates (instead double values) to make sure the newly modified functions can work well for merging and sorting dates respectively.

Here is an example project (zipped) and an example executable (zipped) of what you should have by the end of Step~1.

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Step 2. Set up a new Visual Stidio.NET programming project for this assignment:

Set up your new Visual Stidio.NET programming project for this programming assignment to include the following files:

· DateType.h: Just copy the contents of the header file DateType.h of the enhanced DateType class you implemented for programming #2. There is no need to modify it for this programming assignment.

· DateType.cpp: Copy the contents of the C++ source code file DateType.cpp of the enhanced DateType class you implemented for programming #2. For the convenience of doing both file input/output and the console input/output through the global operators >> and <<, you should make sure(i) for the global output operator << if the ostream object output is cout, the output operator will use slashes as delimiters between month, day, year; otherwise, the output operator will use spaces as delimiters between or month, day, year, and (ii) for the global input operator >> if the istream object input is simply cin, the global input operator will disply promoting messages on screen through cout while reading the three numbers for day, month, and year from input; otherwise, the global input operator will silently read the three numbers for day, month, and year from input. For example, see the correspdoning code implementating these two operators in the example project l for Step 1 above.

· dateDB.cpp: Just copy the contents of the main.cpp file containing your revised mergeTwoSortedVectors and mergeSort and main functions in Step 1 above. We’ll keep mergeTwoSortedVectors and mergeSort functions intact for this programming assignment. But you do need to rewrite the main function according to the specification in the following steps.

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Step 3. Detailed specification of the main function in dateDB.cpp:

Overview: Your main function in dateDB.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<DateType> object as a container in the main memory to store and manage the date information by using various operators and member functions of the DateType class. See more details below.

Key data structures:

· To dynamically store the information of dates, you should declare in your main function ” vector<DateType> dateDB; ” to create a local vector for storing DateType objects. You should also declare in your main function local DateType objects “ DateType date, 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 numDateRecords; ” 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 date manually Keyed in by the user and store it (i.e. push_back) in the end of the vector dateDB,
• B: to clear the vector dateDB into an empty vector first and then read a Batch of dates from a file specified by the users into the vector dateDB,
• D: to Display the dates currently stored in the vector dateDB to the screen,
• M: to Modify one of the dates by reading a new date from the keyboard to overwrite the contents of an existing DateType object (specified by the user) in the vector dateDB,
• W: to Write the dates currently stored in the vector dateDB into a file specified by the user,
• F: to Find and display dates within a range specified by the user,
• S: to Sort the dates currently stored in the vector dateDB 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 DateType object date to read in a new date (i.e. ” cin >> date; ” ) and then add the date into the end of the vector dateDB (i.e. ” dateDB.push_back(date); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘B’: 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 numDateRecords (i.e. ” fin >> numDateRecords; ”), and the program should check to make sure this number is non-negative. The program should clear dateDB (i.e. ” dateDB.clear( ); ” ) to an empty vector, and then set up a loop that iterates for numDateRecords iterations to repeatedly read in a date from the file into the local DateType object date (i.e. ” fin >> date; ” ) and then add the date into the end of the vector dateDB (i.e. ” dateDB.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 dateDB[i] in the vector dateDB (i.e. ” cout << dateDB[i] ; ” ).
• If the choice is ‘M’: the program should ask the user the index i of the date in dateDB[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 dateDB.size( ), and read the new date into dateDB[i] (i.e. ” cin >> dateDB[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 dateDB into the file (i.e. ” fout << dateDB.size( ); ”). The program should then set up a loop that iterates for dateDB.size( ) iterations to repeatedly write each element dateDB[i] into the file (i.e. ” fout << dateDB[i]); ” ). After the loop is finished, the program should close that file (i.e. ” fout.close( ); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘F’, 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 dateDB[i] in the vector dateDB and display the contents of dateDB[i] if dateDB[i] is within the range (i.e. if ” dBegin<= dateDB[i] && dateDB[i] <= dEnd ” is true).
• If the choice is ‘S’, the program should call the revised mergeSort function to sort the dates in order (i.e. ” mergeSort(dateDB ); ” ).
• If the choice is ‘Q’, the program will output a thank-you message, exit the loop, and end the program.