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JavaScript

Posted by Sergio Pichardo
Sergio Pichardo
24,963 Points

Student Record Challenge

Please help me improve my code, and figure out how to display duplicate names, I honestly have no clue where to start.

Sergio Pichardo
Sergio Pichardo
24,963 Points 
var students = [ 
  { name: 'Dave', track: 'Front End Development', achievements: 158, points: 14730 },
  { name: 'Jody', track: 'iOS Development with Swift', achievements: 175, points: 16375 },
  { name: 'Jordan', track: 'PHP Development', achievements: 55, points: 2025 },
  { name: 'Jody', track: 'Learn WordPress', achievements: 40, points: 1950 },
  { name: 'Trish', track: 'Rails Development', achievements: 5, points: 350 }
];

var htmlMessage = '';
var student;
var search;
var notFound = [];

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') {
    print('<p> These names were not found : ' + notFound.join(', ') + '</p>');
    break;
  }
  for (var i = 0; i < students.length; i++) {
    student = students[i];
    if (student.name.toLowerCase() === search.toLowerCase()) {
      htmlMessage = getStudentReport( student );
      print(htmlMessage);
      break;
    } else if (students.indexOf(search) -1){ // (i === (students.length) -1)
        print('<p>' + search + ' was not found.</p>');
        notFound.push(search);
        break;
    }
  }
}

4 Answers

Daniel Newman
PLUS
Daniel Newman
Courses Plus Student 10,715 Points
Daniel Newman
Daniel Newman
Courses Plus Student 10,715 Points

Good enough. If you want to improve something maybe you would like to not print "students.length" times "was not found" and store for nothing notFound.push(search) array in case user typed quit as first prompt answer?

Also, you can make your loop working even error/null is typed or cancel pressed and will not break cycle on successful name search?

I saw many forum posts with this quizz and yours have a firm one looking. What is your first programming language?

Sergio Pichardo
Sergio Pichardo
24,963 Points
Sergio Pichardo
Sergio Pichardo
24,963 Points

Hey Daniel, thanks for the help. I just realized I had a bug in my code. I changed the condition in my else if statement to the following: i === (students.length) -1, but I still don't understand completely what is going on here. I would appreciate it if you could explain this to me.

Oh and my first programming language is Python, but I'm just a newbie.

Daniel Newman
PLUS
Daniel Newman
Courses Plus Student 10,715 Points
Daniel Newman
Daniel Newman
Courses Plus Student 10,715 Points 
students.indexOf(search) -1)

It's about getting index number 1...n and decrease it, to get index of array students. If it first one student then you index will be 0 and all if statement become false. But in fact, indexOf return values 0...n and you don't need to decrease it. Look at the documentation.

if (students.indexOf(search) > -1 )
Sergio Pichardo
Sergio Pichardo
24,963 Points
Sergio Pichardo
Sergio Pichardo
24,963 Points

Thanks Daniel! I understand it now.