Background Context

Welcome to the AirBnB clone project!

Before starting, please read the AirBnB concept page.

First step: Write a command interpreter to manage your AirBnB objects.

This is the first step towards building your first full web application: the AirBnB clone. This first step is very important because you will use what you build during this project with all other following projects: HTML/CSS templating, database storage, API, front-end integration…

Each task is linked and will help you to:

• put in place a parent class (called BaseModel) to take care of the initialization, serialization and deserialization of your future instances
• create a simple flow of serialization/deserialization: Instance <-> Dictionary <-> JSON string <-> file
• create all classes used for AirBnB (User, State, City, Place…) that inherit from BaseModel
• create the first abstracted storage engine of the project: File storage.
• create all unittests to validate all our classes and storage engine

What’s a command interpreter?

Do you remember the Shell? It’s exactly the same but limited to a specific use-case. In our case, we want to be able to manage the objects of our project:

• Create a new object (ex: a new User or a new Place)
• Retrieve an object from a file, a database etc…
• Do operations on objects (count, compute stats, etc…)
• Update attributes of an object
• Destroy an object

Resources

Read or watch:

• cmd module
• cmd module in depth
• packages concept page
• uuid module
• datetime
• unittest module
• args/kwargs
• Python test cheatsheet
• cmd module wiki page
• python unittest

Learning Objectives

At the end of this project, you are expected to be able to explain to anyone, without the help of Google:

General

• How to create a Python package
• How to create a command interpreter in Python using the cmd module
• What is Unit testing and how to implement it in a large project
• How to serialize and deserialize a Class
• How to write and read a JSON file
• How to manage datetime
• What is an UUID
• What is *args and how to use it
• What is **kwargs and how to use it
• How to handle named arguments in a function

Requirements

Python Scripts

• Allowed editors: vi, vim, emacs
• All your files will be interpreted/compiled on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS using python3 (version 3.8.5)
• All your files should end with a new line
• The first line of all your files should be exactly #!/usr/bin/python3
• A README.md file, at the root of the folder of the project, is mandatory
• Your code should use the pycodestyle (version 2.8.*)
• All your files must be executable
• The length of your files will be tested using wc
• All your modules should have a documentation (python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").doc)')
• All your classes should have a documentation (python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").MyClass.doc)')
• All your functions (inside and outside a class) should have a documentation (python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").my_function.doc)' and python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").MyClass.my_function.doc)')
• A documentation is not a simple word, it’s a real sentence explaining what’s the purpose of the module, class or method (the length of it will be verified)

Python Unit Tests

• Allowed editors: vi, vim, emacs
• All your files should end with a new line
• All your test files should be inside a folder tests
• You have to use the unittest module
• All your test files should be python files (extension: .py)
• All your test files and folders should start by test_
• Your file organization in the tests folder should be the same as your project
• e.g., For models/base_model.py, unit tests must be in: tests/test_models/test_base_model.py
• e.g., For models/user.py, unit tests must be in: tests/test_models/test_user.py
• All your tests should be executed by using this command: python3 -m unittest discover tests
• You can also test file by file by using this command: python3 -m unittest tests/test_models/test_base_model.py
• All your modules should have a documentation (python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").doc)')
• All your classes should have a documentation (python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").MyClass.doc)')
• All your functions (inside and outside a class) should have a documentation (python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").my_function.doc)' and python3 -c 'print(import("my_module").MyClass.my_function.doc)')
• We strongly encourage you to work together on test cases, so that you don’t miss any edge case

More Info

Execution

Your shell should work like this in interactive mode:

$ ./console.py
(hbnb) help

Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
EOF  help  quit

(hbnb) 
(hbnb) 
(hbnb) quit
$

But also in non-interactive mode: (like the Shell project in C)

$ echo "help" | ./console.py
(hbnb)

Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
EOF  help  quit
(hbnb) 
$
$ cat test_help
help
$
$ cat test_help | ./console.py
(hbnb)

Documented commands (type help <topic>):
========================================
EOF  help  quit
(hbnb) 
$

All tests should also pass in non-interactive mode: $ echo "python3 -m unittest discover tests" | bash