AddressBook

This is an AddressBook program written for an interview test. The source code follows the abstract factory design pattern which makes program:

• More Scalable
• Easy to contribute to
• Easy to wrap with Mock Tests

The code makes use of smart pointers wherever possible which makes the code memory safe.

Build Instructions

The project was built using VisualStudio 2019 targetting C++14. Premake is used to build the project.

To Build the project:

• Use the GenerateProject.bat file to generate Visual Studio .sln file
• The solution can then be opened and built
• The executables binary is generated in the bin folder

Currently the build system only supports Windows but support for other platforms would be added in the future.

Documentation

A walkthrough of the source code can be found here: https://youtu.be/0KZnnGY6pB8

The source is divided into main parts:

• Abstract
• Implementation

The Abstract files lay out the basic interface, on top of which are the implentations created.

Following are the two abstract files:

Entry

The Entry is just a simple abstract class that provides pure virtual functions for adding, checking and retriving information to a given element of the Addressbook.

class Entry {
	public:
		virtual ~Entry() = default;

		virtual void setFirstName(const char* fName) = 0;
		virtual void setLastName(const char* lName) = 0;
		virtual const char* getFirstName() = 0;
		virtual const char* getLastName() = 0;
		virtual int getID() = 0;
		virtual bool hasPhoneNumber() = 0;
		virtual const char* getPhoneNumber() = 0;
		virtual void addPhoneNumber(const char* ph) = 0;
	};

AddressBook

The AddressBook is what adds, removes and retrieves the Entry objects themselves.

class AddressBook {
	public:
		virtual ~AddressBook() = default;
    
		virtual Shared<Entry> addEntry(Shared<Entry>& entry) = 0;
		virtual void removeEntry(Shared<Entry>& entry) = 0;
		virtual Shared<std::vector<Shared<Entry>>> getEntriesByFName() = 0;
		virtual void printEntriesByFName() = 0;
		virtual Shared<std::vector<Shared<Entry>>> getEntriesByLName() = 0;
		virtual void printEntriesByLName() = 0;
		virtual Shared<std::vector<Shared<Entry>>> searchEntryByFName(const char* fName) = 0;
		virtual Shared<std::vector<Shared<Entry>>> searchEntryByLName(const char* lName) = 0;
 	};

Creation of Entries

The EntryImpl class provides overloaded, static Create() function that creates a std::shared_ptr to an EntryImpl object and returns a sp to an Entry object pointing to it.

Shared<Entry> EntryImpl::Create(const char* fName, const char* lName)
    {
        return createShared<EntryImpl>(fName, lName);
    }

    Shared<Entry> EntryImpl::Create(const char* fName, const char* lName, const char* phoneNumber)
    {
        return createShared<EntryImpl>(fName, lName, phoneNumber);
    }

Entries can thus be created in the follwing way:

 Shared<Entry> entry10 = EntryImpl::Create("Jason",    "Silva");
 Shared<Entry> entry11 = EntryImpl::Create("Andy",     "Wier");
 //Entries with phone numbers
 Shared<Entry> entry12 = EntryImpl::Create("Brandon",  "Sanderson", "07566037156");

An AdressBookImpl object can be created and the entries can be added like so:

auto* addrBook = new AddressBookImpl(); // Needs to use smart pointers

    addrBook->addEntry(entry);
    addrBook->addEntry(entry2);
    addrBook->addEntry(entry3);

Improvements

The project can be improved in many ways, to name a few:

• Using an algorithm like Suffix tree to store the Entries, which would make the retrieval of entries (The operation that's performed the most) to be much faster
• Using a Mock test (e.g., GTest) for unit testing the functionalities
• Provide build support for other platforms so it can be contributes to by most developers
• Provide better Documentation
• Improve upon the design pattern