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Our address book functionality is getting there. In this video, we implement the ability to add contacts via the command line.
Code Samples
def run
loop do
puts "Address Book"
puts "a: Add Contact"
puts "p: Print Address Book"
puts "e: Exit"
print "Enter your choice: "
input = gets.chomp.downcase
case input
when 'a'
add_contact
when 'p'
print_contact_list
when 'e'
break
end
end
end
def add_contact
contact = Contact.new
print "First name: "
contact.first_name = gets.chomp
print "Middle name: "
contact.middle_name = gets.chomp
print "Last name: "
contact.last_name = gets.chomp
contacts.push(contact)
end
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Okay, so
we have the beginning of our menu set up.
0:00
Let's go ahead and add another option
to print out our contact list.
0:03
Now, if we scroll down here, we already
have this method called print_contact_list
0:08
which does exactly what we want to.
0:13
So, all we need to do is
add this as a menu option.
0:16
So we'll go ahead and
add the option to print it out.
0:22
There we go.
0:29
That will just display it on the menu.
0:30
Now we need to add this as an option.
0:33
And this is really easy,
all we need to do is say.
0:36
When the input is the letter p,
we call the print_contact_list method.
0:40
Let's just make sure we
spelled it correctly.
0:48
And we did.
0:51
So this should be everything
that we need to do.
0:53
Let's go ahead and run this and
make sure it works.
0:56
All right.
Here are two options,
1:02
p to print the address book,
and e to exit.
1:04
Well, let's go ahead and print it.
1:07
Well, it prints the word Contact List,
but nothing's in there.
1:09
And why is that?
1:13
It's because we haven't
added any contacts.
1:15
So, what we're gonna have to do is add
the ability to add contacts in here.
1:18
Now we're gonna do that in two parts here.
1:28
So let's go ahead and
add the ability to add a contact.
1:32
And add a menu item for it.
1:40
And we're just going to say
when the input letter is a,
1:44
we're gonna call the add contact method,
which we have to write now.
1:49
So this is gonna be similar
to what we did before.
2:01
And let's go ahead, and
since we're adding a contact,
2:05
which we're going to be appending
to the internal contacts array,
2:09
let's go ahead and
initialize a new contact.
2:13
And now we can just prompt the user to
enter the information about their contact.
2:16
Enter their first name, and
2:24
then the same thing with last name.
2:28
Oops, forgot the middle name here.
2:38
Okay, that looks good.
2:49
Now we're in an interesting position here
because we could append the contact to
2:51
the contacts array right now,
but we still want to be able
2:55
to enter addresses or
phone numbers for each contact.
3:00
Now we'll get to that in a minute, but for
3:04
right now let's just
append the contacts array.
3:06
Now remember, we've got an attribute
reader for the contacts array.
3:11
So we don't have to use
the at sign to append it.
3:16
So we'll just say contacts.push and
3:20
it will be this contact right here.
3:26
So let's click down here and exit,
all right, clear the screen,
3:32
I'm gonna run this again.
3:36
And see what happens so let me add
a contact, Jason, no middle name, Seifer.
3:38
Okay that seems to have worked, now let's
go ahead and print the address book.
3:44
Okay, looks like I'm in here,
let me add another contact.
3:49
Nick Avery Pettit.
3:56
Okay, that seems to have worked.
4:00
Let's go ahead and print the address book.
4:03
Okay, looks like that's working.
4:06
And let's just see something
really quickly here.
4:10
If we exit, and I'm gonna clear my screen,
and if I restart again,
4:12
if we go to print the address book,
4:16
you'll notice that it's empty even though
we just added Nick and Jason as contacts.
4:18
The reason is, that takes place entirely
in memory and we are gonna be writing this
4:24
out to a file but
we'll be doing that a little bit later.
4:28
Next up we're gonna be going through and
doing the loop for adding addresses and
4:31
phone numbers to our contact before
pinning them to the contact's array.
4:35
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