Studio: Loops

Now that we’ve launched our shuttle, let’s use loops (iteration) to automate some tasks.

Open loops/studio in javascript-projects. Before you dive in, you might notice that we have several files and folders inside. Your work will go into solution.js, but please feel free to explore the program and please don’t edit anything outside solution.js. To get started, run the command. npm install, in your terminal.

Part A: Put dinner together

  1. First, inside solution.js, use the variables provided to store the following arrays.

    • Protein options:
    ['chicken', 'pork', 'tofu', 'beef', 'fish', 'beans']
    
    • Grain options:
    ['rice', 'pasta', 'corn', 'potato', 'quinoa', 'crackers']
    
    • Vegetable options:
    ['peas', 'green beans', 'kale', 'edamame', 'broccoli', 'asparagus']
    
    • Beverage options:
    ['juice', 'milk', 'water', 'soy milk', 'soda', 'tea']
    
    • Dessert options
    ['apple', 'banana', 'more kale', 'ice cream', 'chocolate', 'kiwi']
    
  2. Inside of mealAssembly(), write a for loop to assemble numMeals meals.

    1. The meals must include one item from each category in the pantry array.
    Tip

    The computer needs to know how many crew members to prepare food for and what ingredients. Consider creating a nested loop that will create a meal for each crew member and then add it into a larger collection of meals.

    1. Each ingredient can only be used ONCE.
    2. Add each meal to the meals array once it is assembled.
    3. To test your own solution, scroll down to another function defined in this file called runProgram(). Uncomment the lines that call the mealAssembly function and print the result. Run the command node index to see how your work is progressing.

Part B: Collect User Input

Update askForNumber() to add user input and validation.

  1. Using a while loop, ask the user to select the number of meals to assemble. Validate the input to make sure it is an integer from 1 - 6.
  2. Save the result to the numMeals variable returned by the function.
  3. Test your solution to this part by returning to the runProgram() function in the file and uncommenting the section labelled for testing Part B. Run node index to see the result.

Checking Your Work

If you want to make sure that you have checked all the boxes, run the following command in your terminal.

npm test

This command runs the Jest tests that are checking your work for you. If you have a test that fails, check out the name of the test to get a hint as to what you are missing. If you need a refresher on how running the tests works, check out the article on testing your code.

Bonus Mission

Working and living aboard this amazing space shuttle requires you to pay the utmost attention to cybersecurity. Once you are done working on the meal system, you are prompted to create a new password that will be used for the next 24 hours. Having run out of strong password ideas, your shuttle captain has encouraged you to make a password generator for yourself.

Write your code inside generatePassword().

  1. Construct a for loop that combines the two strings together, alternating the characters from each source, and saves the combined string to the code variable.

    Example
    1. If string1 = "1234" and string2 = "5678", then the output will be “15263748”.
    2. If string1 = "ABCDEF" and string2 = "notyet", then the output will be “AnBoCtDyEeFt”.
    3. If string1 = "LoOt" and string2 = "oku!", then the output will be “LookOut!”.