The Final Project…. of Phase 1
Phase 1 ended with a project to show what we had learned so far. The project itself was exciting, but intimidating. It project required us to create a new repository and make the entire thing from scratch, this was a huge hurdle to me as I didn’t know where to start or what I wanted to do.
I decided to choose something that would make sense to me and have fun with it, my first thought: Video Games. Since I have played video games my whole life, I felt comfortable using one for this project and it seemed like it would be a simple option to do a list of characters and their attributes so I could fully understand my own code without overwhelming myself.
The basis of the project was to create a simple CLI by using an existing API. The API that I had chosen (originally) was a Legend of Zelda API but it crashed too often for it to be safe to use so I had to hunt for a new API.I happened to come across an API for Nintendo Super Smash Bros. and thought that it would work just as well. My project became a basic app that could gather the characters of the Nintendo Super Smash Bros. and list them.
After the characters had been listed, the user was able to “Choose your Character” once a character was chosen, that characters basic description and basic stats would appear.
Once I had my “Api” and was ready, I applied it to my project to access the data. I then parsed the data using JSON to use it throughout my project. (example below)
Since my “Api” was ready, I needed to create an “in-between” class that I called “Class SmashBro”. To me, this class acted a middle man to the entire project using the “Api” class to gather the remote data and bring it into our program to use.
This SmashBro class stored the characters names, guide(description), and basic stats.
Now that my base was all setup, I just had to actually create the functional part that the User would see and interact with in my “CLI” class. This was the fun part to me. I created a simple greeting that the user would see first using a “start” method. Under my greeting, there is a “main menu” for the user to choose what they would like to do. Based on their input of either “+” or “x” to “list the characters” or “exit the program”, respectively.
By typing “+” the user has chosen to see a list of characters. This will take the user directly to a list and prompts the user to “choose your character” to see the characters information. The characters are listed 1–26 and the user just has to type the number of which character they would like to see more information about. If the user types anything outside of numbers 1 through 26, they will get a message saying “Character Locked! (Invalid Response)” which would bring the previous prompt to choose their character instead of breaking or exiting out. Once the character has been chosen, the user can just type “x” to exit the program or type “+” to go back to the list of characters to choose a new one.
This project was no simple feat but I managed to break through and have a good time after getting the hang of it, which I am proud of. I do wish I could have done more with it but there are plenty of projects ahead of me to make even better.
As a re-cap, the gif above is how I felt all throughout Phase 1 with having absolutely no coding background and the fast paced environment but I have learned so much and am excited to continue learning new things!
