Object Oriented Kickstarter

Objectives

• Build classes that produce objects that relate to one another.

Description

In this lab, we are going to be creating a very, very simple version of Kickstarter. We'll have Projects and Backers (and no concept of money at all), and they will need to interact with one another in a realistic way.

We want our interface to work something like this:

bob = Backer.new("Bob")
awesome_project = Project.new("This is an Awesome Project")

bob.back_project(awesome_project)

bob.backed_projects
# => [#<Project:0x000001018683d0 @title="This is an Awesome Project"...>]

awesome_project.backers
# => [#<Backer:0x000001018b9370 @name="Bob"...>]

The tricky thing here is that projects can have many backers and backers can back many projects.

Instructions

The specs have been set to run in default order, and are written in such a way that tests for the Backer and Project classes are mixed in with one another. This is not how you'd normally see specs for multiple objects. For the purposes of this lab, though, following the specs in order will eventually lead you to the correct relationships between your classes.

• When a Backer instance is initialized, it should be initialized with a @backed_projects variable set to an empty array. Instances of the Backer class should have an attr_reader for backed projects. This way, a backer can report on the projects they back.

• When a Project instance is initialized, it should be initialized with a @backers variable set to an empty array. Instances of the Project class should have an attr_reader for backers. This way, a project can report on who its backers are.

• Once both classes have their attributes and readers set up, write a method on the Backer class called back_project() that takes in a Project instance and adds the project to its @backed_projects attribute.

• Similarly, write a method on the Project class called add_backer() that takes in a Backer instance and adds the backer to its @backers attribute.

Great! We've got backers keeping track of the projects they back and projects keeping track of their backers.

But... do you see the problem? Both sides of this relationship, backer and project, are keeping track of each other, and to maintain consistent data, if one side is updated, the other side should be as well.

• Whenever back_project() is called to update @backed_projects, the project should alsoupdate its @backers list.

• Similarly, whenever add_backer() is called to update @backers, the backer should also update its @backed_projects list.

You may realize that this set up does not maintain a single source of truth. The trouble here is that our usual way of maintaining a "has-many" / "belongs-to" relationship won't work here. We'll address this is upcoming lessons,

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