/SecretSantaGame

Primary LanguageJava

Secret Santa Game

Project Description This Java project automates the Secret Santa gift exchange Game by reading employee details from an Excel file and assigning each employee a random recipient (avoiding assignments from last year). The program ensures that no one is assigned to themselves or their last year's recipient. The results are saved in a new Excel file for easy distribution.

Features Parses employee data from an Excel file. Reads last year’s Secret Santa assignments to avoid reassignments. Randomly assigns Secret Santa participants, ensuring no one gets themselves or their last year’s recipient. Writes the new assignments to an Excel file. Provides meaningful error handling for cases where assignments cannot be made.

Technologies Used Java: Core language used for developing the application. Apache POI: Library used to read and write .xlsx (Excel) files.

Prerequisites Make sure you have the following installed:

Java 8 or higher. Apache Maven (for dependency management).

Installation

  1. Clone the repository to your local machine: git clone https://github.com/gowthamsss/SecretSantaGame.git cd SecretSantaGame

  2. Add the required dependencies to your pom.xml (or ensure Apache POI is properly included). org.apache.poi poi-ooxml 5.2.3 org.apache.poi poi 5.2.3 org.apache.commons commons-collections4 4.4 org.apache.logging.log4j log4j-core 2.18.0

  3. Compile and run the project

Running the Project To run the project, simply execute the Main.java class. The program will:

  1. Read employee data from Employee-List.xlsx.
  2. Read last year's assignments from Last-Year-Santa-List.xlsx.
  3. Randomly assign new Secret Santa pairings while avoiding duplicates from the previous year.
  4. Save the new pairings to Secret-Santa-Game-Result.xlsx.

Error Handling

  1. File Not Found: If the input Excel files are missing or cannot be read, an IOException is thrown.
  2. Invalid Assignments: If the program is unable to find valid assignments due to constraints (such as too few participants or incompatible data), an IllegalStateException is thrown.

Unit Test Unit Test case handled for secret santa assigner class.