Creation of a command interpreter to manage the hbnb projects

This is the first step towards building your first full web application: the AirBnB clone. The aim of the project is to deploy a replica of the Airbnb Website using my server. The final version of this project will have:

• A command interpreter to manipulate data without a visual interface, like a shell (for development and debugging)
• A website (front-end) with static and dynamic functionalities
• A comprehensive database to manage the backend functionalities
• An API that provides a communication interface between the front and backend of the system.

• Videos showing examples of how various parts of the project work, listed below:
• HBNB videos
• Holberton Airbnb overview
• The Airbnb Console
• Airbnb ORM
• Airbnb API
• Final product
• Other resource
• cmd module
  • packages concept page
  • Python packages
  • uuid module
  • datetime
  • unittest module
  • args/kwargs
  • Python test cheatsheet
  • AirBnB website.

This will help to be able to manage the objects of our project:

• Creation of a new object (ex: a new "User" or a new "Place")
• Retrieval of an object from a file storage, a database etc…
• Perform operations on objects (count, compute stats, etc…)
• Update attributes of an object
• Destroy an object

The list of the objects (instances) that can be created are as follows:

• BaseModel
• User
• City
• Amenity
• State
• Review
• Place

• models directory contains all classes used for the entire project. A class, called “model” in a OOP project is the representation of an object/instance.
• tests directory contains all unit tests.
• console.py file is the entry point of our command interpreter.
• models/base_model.py file is the base class of all our models. It contains common elements:
  • attributes: id, created_at and updated_at
  • methods: save() and to_json()
• models/engine directory contains all storage classes (using the same prototype). For the moment I will have only one: file_storage.py.

The project's implementation will happen in the following phases:

The first phase is to manipulate a powerful storage system to give an abstraction between objects and how they are stored and persisted. To achieve this, I will:

• put in place a parent class (called BaseModel) to take care of the initialization, serialization and deserialization of my 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
• Create a data model
• Manage (create, update, destroy, etc) objects via a console/command interpreter
• Store and persist objects to files (JSON files)

Description of the command interpreter

To start up the interpreter, clone this repository, and run the console file on linux as follows:

• Clone this repository: git clone "https://github.com/Dikachis/AirBnB_clone.git"
• Access AirBnb directory: cd AirBnB_clone
• Run hbnb(interactively): ./console and then press enter command
• Run hbnb(non-interactively): echo "<command>" | ./console.py

$ ./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)
$

guillaume@ubuntu:~/AirBnB$ ./console.py
(hbnb) all MyModel
** class doesn't exist **
(hbnb) show BaseModel
** instance id missing **
(hbnb) show BaseModel My_First_Model
** no instance found **
(hbnb) create BaseModel
49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907
(hbnb) all BaseModel
["[BaseModel] (49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907) {'created_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 10, 25, 903293), 'id': '49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907', 'updated_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 10, 25, 903300)}"]
(hbnb) show BaseModel 49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907
[BaseModel] (49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907) {'created_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 10, 25, 903293), 'id': '49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907', 'updated_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 10, 25, 903300)}
(hbnb) destroy
** class name missing **
(hbnb) update BaseModel 49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907 first_name "Betty"
(hbnb) show BaseModel 49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907
[BaseModel] (49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907) {'first_name': 'Betty', 'id': '49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907', 'created_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 10, 25, 903293), 'updated_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 11, 3, 49401)}
(hbnb) create BaseModel
2dd6ef5c-467c-4f82-9521-a772ea7d84e9
(hbnb) all BaseModel
["[BaseModel] (2dd6ef5c-467c-4f82-9521-a772ea7d84e9) {'id': '2dd6ef5c-467c-4f82-9521-a772ea7d84e9', 'created_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 11, 23, 639717), 'updated_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 11, 23, 639724)}", "[BaseModel] (49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907) {'first_name': 'Betty', 'id': '49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907', 'created_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 10, 25, 903293), 'updated_at': datetime.datetime(2017, 10, 2, 3, 11, 3, 49401)}"]
(hbnb) destroy BaseModel 49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907
(hbnb) show BaseModel 49faff9a-6318-451f-87b6-910505c55907
** no instance found **
(hbnb) 

-Nathnael Mesfin Kifle