Solar System

At a Glance

• Build a model of a solar system to practice classes
• Individual, stage 1 project
• Due before class, Monday Feb 12

Intro

Let's make a planetary system!

Our customer needs to be able to learn about a solar system. By the end of our Solar System project, our customer will be able to interact with the program and choose which pieces of information they can see at a time, specifically by choosing which planet.

In wave 1, this project will encourage us to work with hard-coded data, which allows our code to be more simple and readable with a small amount of data. In wave 2, this project will shift our code away from the hard-coded data and instead to use classes. Using classes will allow our code to be more extensible. In wave 3, we will use that work from wave 2 to allow a user to interact with the program, view all planets, and create a new planet.

Learning Goals

• Practice creating custom classes
• Use a hash to initialize an object
• Create an object which contains a collection of other objects
• Practice creating instance methods

Wave 1

The learning goal for this wave is to work on building a single class.

Primary Requirements

• Create a SolarSystem class with an @planets instance variable.
• Create an initialize method which should take a collection of planet names and store them in an @planets instance variable.
• Create a method that adds a planet to the list (not using user input).
• Create a method which will return, not print, a list of the planets as a String in this style:

1.  Mercury
2.  Venus
3.  Earth
4.  Mars
5.  Jupiter
6.  Hoth

• Write code to test your SolarSystem
• Instead of Strings for planets, modify SolarSystem's initialize method to take a list of hashes where each planet is sent as a hash with at least 5 attributes. For example, your code could now look like this:

planet_a = { name: "Planet A", attrA: "A", attrB: "B" }
planet_b = { name: "Planet B", attrA: "C", attrB: "D" }
my_solar_system = SolarSystem.new( [ planet_a, planet_b ] )

Optional Enhancements

• Give each planet a year_length attribute which is the length of time the planet takes to go around its star.
• Give each planet a distance_from_the_sun attribute
• (This becomes a requirement in Wave 3.) Write a program that asks for user input to query the planets:
  • First, ask the user to select a planet they'd like to learn about.
  • Present the user with a list of planets from which they can choose. Something like:
    • 1. Mercury, 2. Venus, 3. Earth, 4. Secret Earth, 5. Mars, 6. Jupiter, ... 13. Exit
  • Provide the user with well formatted information about the planet (diameter, mass, number of moons, primary export, etc.)
  • Then ask the user for another planet.

Wave 2

The learning goal for this wave is to work on building multiple classes, and composing these classes together.

Primary Requirements

• Create a Planet class which will represent a planet.
  • Add an initialize method which takes several arguments and uses them to set the class' instance variables.
  • Create a method that returns the Planet's attributes in an easy to read fashion.
  • Create reader methods to give a user access to read the instance variables.
• Make your SolarSystem class take an array of Planets instead of hashes.
  • When printing the planet list or planet details, it should call the corresponding method in Planet.

Optionals

• (This becomes a requirement in Wave 3.) Create a method, outside any class, which creates a planet from user input.

Wave 3

The learning goal for this wave is to build a UI.

Primary Requirements

• Create an interface where the user can interact with the solar system and be able to select a planet and view information about it.
• Allow your user to add their own planet.

Optional Enhancements

• Ensure that the each planet has a @distance_from_the_sun attribute. Using this data, add a method to determine the distance from any other planet (assuming planets are in a straight line from the sun)
• Give your solar system an age (in earth years).
• Define a method that returns the local year of the planet based on it's rotation since the beginning of the solar system

What Instructors Are Looking For

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