Username Generator Lab

Your goal is to write a ruby function that generates a username. It should behave in the following way:

inputs	output
James Bond 2007	jbond07
John Doe 1978	jdoe78
John Doe 1978	jdoe78_1
John Doe 1978	jdoe78_2
Chico Marx 1887 1	seller-cmarx87
Harpo Marx 1888 2	manager-hmarx88
Groucho Marx 1890 3	admin-gmarx90

Setup

git clone THIS_REPO
cd username_generator

Testing

We'll use a tool called rspec to outline our objectives AND test our code as we go... hooray for Test Driven Development (TDD)!

rspec is available as a Ruby gem, so start in your terminal by running the command:

gem install rspec

You might get an error here, but we believe in you. Fix it.

Test Driven Development -- Red, Green, Refactor.

Take a look inside the /spec folder, and you'll see our test suite broken up into 2 files.

/spec/the_warmup_spec.rb
/spec/username_spec.rb

To run the tests for each level, type the following in the command line:

rspec spec/the_warmup_spec.rb
# or
rspec spec/the_warmup_spec.rb --format documentation

You should see roughly the following output:

FFFFFFFF ---> 8 failed tests ("F"), 0 passed tests (".")
Failures:

  1) #say_hello returns 'hello'
     Failure/Error: expect( say_hello ).to eq "hello"

       expected: "hello"
            got: "hi"

       (compared using ==)
     # ./spec/the_warmup_spec.rb:8:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'

Finished in 0.0028 seconds (files took 0.08831 seconds to load)
8 examples, 8 failures

Failed examples:
rspec ./spec/the_warmup_spec.rb:7 # #say_hello returns 'hello'

Hooray!

The first tests are failing. We're seeing RED.
Now we need to write code to pass the tests and turn them GREEN.
When all the tests are green, we're ready to stop and REFACTOR!

Warmup Challenge

Run: rspec spec/the_warmup_spec.rb

Code your solutions in warmup.rb.

Tips:

Pay close attention to the rspec output in your terminal
Run your tests frequently and read the output carefully.
BE VERY CAREFUL to use the correct function name.

Username Challenges

Run: rspec spec/username_spec.rb

Level 1

Create a function called format_name that accepts a user's first_name and last_name and returns a lowercase string that joins the first character of the first_name with the last_name.

Create a function called format_year that accepts a four digit integer representing the year (YYYY) and parses out the last two digits of the year and returns a a string ("YY").

Create a function called build_username that takes a user's first_name, last_name, and birth_year, and returns a string with the following format: it starts with the first letter of the first_name, followed by the last_name, followed by the last two digits of the birth_year.

Level 2

Create a function called check_privilege that takes a level (integer) and returns the corresponding user_type (string).

Allocate privilege using the following table:
- 0 --> "user" (the default privilege level)
- 1 --> "seller"
- 2 --> "manager"
- 3 --> "admin"

Create a function called user_type_prefix that takes a level (integer) and returns the corresponding prefix, e.g. "admin-", "manager-", "seller-". See the tests for more details.

Update your build_username function to use prefixes. It should now accept a privilege_level (in addition to the other parameters), and tack it on to the beginning of the username (e.g. "seller-jdoe78"). See the tests for more details.

Level 3

Create a function called generate_username that has four arguments (first_name, last_name, birth_year, privilege_level) and returns a unique username. Come up with a simple way to store usernames as you create them.

STRETCH: If a username already exists, append "_1". Then, increment the counter each time you reuse the username (e.g. "jdoe78", "jdoe78_1", "jdoe7_2", "bbunny60", "bbunny60_1").

BONUS -- Command-line inputs

OPTION 1 -- Interactively get user input from the command line and output a username to the console. I.e. when I run ruby username.rb I should be prompted (from the command line) for my name, birth year, etc.
OPTION 2 -- Accept command line arguments (e.g. ruby username.rb john doe 1980) and output a username to the console.

murcielago17/username-generator