The ALX B&B sums up the implementation of 5 months of studies at the ALX - the fullstack software engineering program. The goal of the project is to deploy a replica of the Airbnb Website using my server. The final version of this project will have:
- A command interpreter to manipulate data without a visual interface, like a shell (for development and debugging)
- A website (front-end) with static and dynamic functionalities
- A comprehensive database to manage the backend functionalities
- An API that provides a communication interface between the front and backend of the system.
As you navigate this code base, it is great to note the following concepts, while completing this project.
- How to create a Python package
- How to create a command interpreter in Python using the cmd module
- What is Unit testing and how to implement it in a large project
- How to serialize and deserialize a Class
- How to write and read a JSON file
- How to manage datetime
- What is an UUID
- What is *args and how to use it
- What is **kwargs and how to use it
- How to handle named arguments in a function
models
directory will contain all classes used for the entire project. A class, called “model” in a OOP project is the representation of an object/instance.tests
directory will contain all unit tests.console.py
file is the entry point of our command interpreter.models/base_model.py
file is the base class of all our models. It contains common elements: attributes:id
,created_at
andupdated_at
methods:save()
andto_json()
models/engine
directory will contain all storage classes (using the same prototype). For the moment I will have only one:file_storage.py
.
The project's implementation will happen in the following phases:
The first phase is to manipulate a powerful storage system to give an abstraction between objects and how they are stored and persisted. To achieve this, I will:
- put in place a parent class (called BaseModel) to take care of the initialization, serialization and deserialization of my future instances
- create a simple flow of serialization/deserialization: Instance <-> Dictionary <-> JSON string <-> file
- create all classes used for AirBnB (User, State, City, Place…) that inherit from BaseModel
- create the first abstracted storage engine of the project: File storage.
- create all unittests to validate all our classes and storage engine
- Create a data model Manage (create, update, destroy, etc) objects via a console/command interpreter
- Store and persist objects to files (JSON files).
Your shell should work like this in interactive mode:
$ ./console.py
(hbnb) help
Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
EOF help quit
(hbnb)
(hbnb)
(hbnb) quit
$
But also in non-interactive mode: (like the Shell project in C)
$ echo "help" | ./console.py
(hbnb)
Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
EOF help quit
(hbnb)
$
$ cat test_help
help
$
$ cat test_help | ./console.py
(hbnb)
Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
EOF help quit
(hbnb)
$