Solution to Extra Challenge at End Of Video

Nice solution, you overlooked one thing though, what if someone doesn't type a name case-sensitive? :)

Here was my solution, slightly different but works just fine.

var student;
var search;
var message = '';
var found = [];

function print(message) {
  var outputDiv = document.getElementById('output');
  outputDiv.innerHTML = message;
}

function listStudent(student) {
  message += '<h2>Student: ' + student.name + '</h2>';
  message += '<p>Track: ' + student.track + '</p>';
  message += '<p>Points: ' + student.points + '</p>';
  message += '<p>Achievements: ' + student.achievements + '</p>';
  return message;
}

while (true) {
  search = prompt('Please enter the name of a student you want to find, type "quit" to stop searching.');
  search = search.toLowerCase();
  if (search === 'quit' || search === null) {
      break;
  }
  for (var i = 0; i < students.length; i += 1) {
    student = students[i];
    if (search === student.name.toLowerCase()) {
      found.push(students[i]);
    } else {
      print('<h2>Student not found.</h2>');
    }
  }
  for (var j = 0; j < found.length; j += 1) {
    print(listStudent(found[j]));
  }
  found = [];
  message = '';
}

Ahh, true. Thanks Andrew!

Andrew Robinson, in your solution when you print the "Student is not found" line, does it technically print "Student is not found" a number of times even when you search for a name that exists?

Let's say I searched for "Trish" which is the 5th object in the array. Since your if/else statement is inside the for loop wouldn't the HTML print 'Student is not found' 4 times before the loop got to the "Trish" object? Does it just happen so fast that we don't see it? It seems to me that it would loop through that code 4 times before getting to Trish, thus printing "Student is not found". Does that make sense?

Edit: meant to post this as a comment not an answer.

Jeff Jensen:

It would only show one instance of "Student not found." because the print function replaces the innerHTML each time, so technically the print function is being called for every student not found but it's replacing it each time.

On the other hand when we print the array of students found, the listStudent function concats the message for each student, and then the print function prints the entire list of students at once.

Hope that clears things up a bit :)

Andrew Robinson

Thanks for the immediate response! I understand that it's being replaced I just wanted to know if it was in fact printing it once before it was replaced by the found student. So if you had a database of tens of thousands of students you might be able to see the "Student not found" statement printed until the computer finds a match right? Thanks!

Jeff Jensen

Yes it's definitely not a scalable option, what I'd most likely do differently now is after the for loop check if the found array is empty and if it is print the not found message, at the minute it's calling the print function for every student not found which is a waste of resources, thanks for pointing that out :)

Andrew Robinson

Gotcha! That makes perfect sense, I just wanted to make sure I was reading through the code correctly! I appreciate the replies!

-Jeff

Here's mine solution without creating additional variable.

var message = '';
var student;
var search;

function print(message) {
  var outputDiv = document.getElementById('output');
  outputDiv.innerHTML = message;
}

function getStudentReport( student ) {
  var report = '<h2>Student: ' + student.name + '</h2>';
  report += '<p>Track: ' + student.track + '</p>';
  report += '<p>Points: ' + student.points + '</p>';
  report += '<p>Achievements: ' + student.achievements + '</p>';
  return report;
}

while (true) {
  search = prompt('Search student records: type a name [Jody] (or type "quit" to end)');
  if (search === null || search.toLowerCase() === 'quit') {
    break;
  }
  for (var i = 0; i < students.length; i += 1) {
    student = students[i];
    if ( student.name === search ) {
      message += getStudentReport( student ); 
    }
  }

  if (message.length > 0){
    print(message);
    message = '';
  } else {
    print("There is no such student.");
  }
}

I don't know if it's bulletproof, but works for me ;)