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Project Overview

8:13 with Megan Amendola

Look at the project you will create in this stage of the course. Plan your work and set up your project.

Teacher's Notes
Video Transcript
Downloads

Suggest Books CSV

Download the CSV here

Pseudocode Workshop

Check out our workshop on Pseudocode

What Visual Studio extensions are being used?

Here are a lot of the extensions I am using: Meg's Favorite Visual Studio Extensions

Local Setup Steps

Create a folder for your project
Open your folder in your IDE
Open the terminal in your IDE
Create a virtual environment
- Mac: python3 -m venv env
- Windows: python -m venv env
Activate your environment
- Mac: source ./env/bin/activate
- Windows: .\env\Scripts\activate
Install SQLAlchemy pip install sqlalchemy
Create requirements file pip freeze > requirements.txt

Installing and using Git on your computer

Windows: Git is not pre-installed on Windows machines. Check out our video on Git installation for Windows. Be sure to check the Teacher's Notes on the video page for additional notes, as the installation process has changed slightly since the video was recorded.
Mac: Every Mac comes with Git pre-installed! To access it, all you need to do is open a terminal with a Bash prompt. You can find instructions for opening the Terminal program in this Treehouse Blog post.
Linux: Linux systems also come with Git pre-installed. If you're running Linux, we assume you already know how to get to a terminal, but if you're stuck, click the Get Help button on this page to ask for help in the Treehouse Community forum.

Watch the Introduction to Git course to learn more about git and version control.

[MUSIC] 0:00

Now that we've learned a bit about SQLAlchemy, 0:04

it's time to practice our skills with a small project. 0:07

I have here a file full of great books to help you on your journey. 0:11

Unfortunately, programming books don't have very diverse authors, but 0:16

maybe that's something you can help with. 0:20

For those working locally, 0:23

you can download this file from the teacher's notes below. 0:25

Together, we'll need to make a database to hold them. 0:28

Then we'll create a console program that looks something like this. 0:32

It will have a menu where users can add books to the database. 0:35

You can search for a book. 0:58

And then have the option to edit or delete it. 1:06

The user can also check some data, like the most recently published book, 1:13

or how many books there are in the database. 1:18

Let's plan this out. 1:24

Create a new project folder and open it in your IDE, or 1:25

open the workspace attached to this video. 1:28

We'll have two files, one to hold our database logic, and 1:32

the other to hold our application. 1:35

Let's call the database file models.py, and 1:38

the application file app.py. 1:43

Inside of models.py, let's think about what we'll need to do. 1:48

We'll need to create a database and 1:55

give it a name, let's say books.db. 1:59

Then we'll need to create a model. 2:05

And if we look at our data, we'll need to have a title, author, 2:11

date published, and price. 2:15

Cool, in app.py, we'll need to import our models file. 2:26

Our application will need a main menu. 2:35

.That will have add, search, 2:42

analysis, exit, and view options. 2:46

We'll also need some functions to add books to the database. 2:51

We'll need to edit books and delete them. 2:59

We'll also need a search function, And 3:08

probably some data cleaning functions too. 3:13

Then we'll need to have a loop, That's running our program. 3:19

So when the user decides to exit, the program stops, nice. 3:27

If you wanna plan more and be more detailed about what you'll be creating, 3:31

then go ahead, this is your project. 3:36

So write as many comments and pseudocode as you need. 3:39

Let's start by creating our virtual environment. 3:44

If you're in workspaces, you can skip this step. 3:49

Also, I'm on a Mac, so if you're on Windows, check the teacher's notes below 3:52

for a refresher on how to get your virtual environment working. 3:56

The commands are slightly different. 3:59

I'm gonna run python3 -m venv env. 4:03

And yes, I would like to use it. 4:12

You can see our folder was created, and then I need to activate it, 4:17

source ./environment/bin/activate, and it's been activated, perfect. 4:22

Then we can install SQLAlchemy pip install sqlalchemy. 4:30

That might take a little bit, nope, was super fast. 4:38

And then I'm going to run pip freeze > requirements.txt to save 4:41

our one requirement, which is just SQLAlchemy. 4:47

So create that file, and you can give it a check by clicking on it, 4:54

SQLAlchemy is in there, awesome. 4:57

We're also going to create a repo for this project on GitHub. 5:00

Let's create a file called gitignore, New File, .gitignore. 5:04

Inside, write the name of your environment folder, for me, it's env. 5:13

Since we don't wanna send all those files up to our repo, 5:19

these files are just for you. 5:23

When someone wants to run your program, 5:26

they'll use the requirements file to install SQLAlchemy for themselves. 5:28

I'm also going to add /__pycache__. 5:35

This is a common file that pops up when you're working in Python. 5:38

You can also see this .vscode file was added here by Visual Studio. 5:46

That one, we can also ignore. 5:51

And another helpful one to include if you're on a Mac is .DS_Store. 5:55

This is a file Macs throw into projects sometimes, and 6:02

it doesn't really hurt anything by being there. 6:05

But it doesn't help anything either, so let's just ignore it. 6:09

Save the file, and then in the console, let's run git init, awesome. 6:12

And now you can see, these are grayed out because they've been ignored. 6:20

And these are all green because they are waiting to be added to our repo. 6:24

Next is creating the repo on GitHub. 6:30

You can navigate straight to github.com/new to create a new 6:35

repo if you're logged in. 6:40

Choose a name for your repo. 6:42

And choose public or private, it's up to you. 6:51

When you're ready, click create repository. 6:59

Then we'll need to copy this code down here, Ctrl+C. 7:05

And let's jump back into our terminal, Ctrl+V. 7:17

Now let's run git add ., to add all of the files we've created so far. 7:25

Then we're going to run git commit -m, 7:34

and then our message, which is initial commit. 7:39

This just means it's the first thing we've added. 7:46

And it'll show you the five files that we've added. 7:49

And then you'll want to run git push origin master. 7:53

Awesome, back in your GitHub repo, refresh the page. 8:01

And ta-da, all your code is here. 8:05

Now we're ready to get started on our project. 8:08

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