Assignment 5

Structured Data (Refactor Assignment)

Structures make it so much easier to organize and consume data. Let's think how a structure could be employed to improve you Config File Generator and Config Reader Library.

In our Reader Library you consumed your config file into an array and returned its pointer to your Driver project. Instead of returning an array of loosely associated values you could have returned a struct if you knew what a struct was at the time.

The same is true of your Config File Generator it could take advantage of many structures. Your config file could be read into a struct but also some things like timezone could be stored in an enum so you can easily validate data the user provides.

Here is what you will build:

A better Config Reader and Config Generator

1. You will refactor your ConfigReader Library to return a struct pointer instead of an string* (string pointer)

• Your struct should match the fields in your file

  first_name
  last_name
  timezone
  ...

• The definition for your struct should be kept in the libraries .h file so you can use it in your ConfigGenerator without redefining it there.

• You will write a config file writer function that takes your struct as an argument and exposes the function as a prototype in your .h file

• You might consider renaming your namespace since you are not longer a config reader but this is optional. The signature for this function might look a little like this

  • bool writeConfig(std::string path, configStruct data)
    • This will write the data in the struct to the path given.
    • This will return a true if the file is written successfully.
    • This will return false if the file cannot be opened or written to.

2. You will refactor your Config File Generator to take advantage of your Config reader library

• It will rely on the ConfigReader to read a file path you define as a const in your Generator
• When performing Init and Edit operations your Generator should employ the same struct as your ConfigReader for keeping track of your data.
• Utilize the ConfigReader's new writer function to save your file to the file system after init or edit.

3. Organize your project files

• Put your ConfigGenerator project in the config_generator folder of this project
• Put your ConfigReader library project in the config_reader_lib folder
• Push and open PR