Software 1 - Class Exercise 1

Goals

• Create the base classes for the store.
• Interact with the classes by making some objects and running basic logic on them.
• Learn how to make a console app wait for certain input before exiting a loop.

Instructions

1. Create a new console app in Visual Studio. Make sure to give the solution a good name and make sure you create the solution in place that you can find it later.
2. Add a class to your project called Product. This class will be what's called a base class or a parent class. This will be the most basic class that all product classes will inherit from.
3. Add the following properties to your new class.
   • Name - Type string
   • Price - Type decimal
   • Quantity - Type int
   • Description - Type string
4. Add another class called CatFood. Make this class inherit from the base class Product.
5. Give CatFood a few Properties.
   • WeightPounds - Type double
   • KittenFood- Type bool
6. Make another class called DogLeash and have it inherit from Product as well. Give it a the following Properties
   • LengthInches - Type int
   • Material - Type string
7. Now we want to get this console app to run until the user decides to end it. We will do this by using a while loop. Loops require 3 things: an inital condition, check in condition, and a change in condition. Our inital condition is going to be our first input from the user. Our check is what is in the while loop. Our change is going to be what the user inputs after an action has been complete. So, let's get started with the initial condition.
8. At the top of the files, add the following lines: Console.WriteLine("Press 1 to add a product"); and below that add Console.WriteLine("Type 'exit' to quit");.
9. Add this line of code below what you added in step 11 string userInput = Console.ReadLine();. This will get what the user enters before hitting enter.
10. Now add your while loop. The condition in the loop should be something like this: userInput.ToLower() != "exit". We use the method ToLower just in case the user enters "Exit" instead of "exit".
11. Inside the brackets for the while loop, at the end, add this line userInput = Console.ReadLine();. This is our change in condition. We will add code before this though, so it will make more sense after that. Add the instructions for the console app above that line again: Console.WriteLine("Press 1 to add a product"); and Console.WriteLine("Type 'exit' to quit");.
12. Inside of the while loop, above the what you added in the previous step, add an if statement. This if statment will check the input of the user a second time to see if they wanted to add a product. We told them to enter "1" to add a product, so check for that in the if statment. Remember, the input is a string type, not an int.
13. Create a new object. It should be CatFood or DogLeash, not the base class Product. Note: remember to add a using statment so that the Program class knows where to find your class.
14. Since we don't really have a database, when we add a product, we're going to just create that object and print it to the console. Use Console.Write() and Console.ReadLine() to get data from the user and then add it to the object you just created. Since some of the types aren't going to match, you will need to convert them using the target types Parse method. So to turn a string to an int, use int.Parse().
15. To make printing the object easier, we'll use the JsonSerializer class. You don't need to know all the ins and outs of how this works right now, but basically it will just convert our object to a json object. Add the following line to your code: Console.WriteLine(JsonSerializer.Serialize(dogLeash));. You will replace dogLeash with whatever you named your object.
16. Now, all you have to do is test it! Run the application and see if everything works properly.