How do I approach this programming prompt?

Question

=================================

An ordering service allows customers to order filled breads.

The bread comes in two sizes:

-30cm

-15cm

And three types:

-White

-Brown

-Seeded

There are five filling choices:

-Beef

-Chicken

-Cheese

-Egg

-Tuna

-Turkey

The ordering service calculates the number of each: 

• size of bread sold

• type of bread (white, brown, or seeded) sold

• filling sold.

The customer is then asked to confirm their order, alter their choices, or choose not to proceed.

================================

The approach I've tried (In Python) is:

1. Initialized a 2D array with the format (Filling, Quantity of sales)
2. Various loops used to output fillings
3. As soon as the filling is selected, the 2D array index [1][i] is incremented by 1.

However, I've run into some issues such as not being able to alter the order once it has been placed and it does not look like the most efficient solution. How do I approach this prompt with a better solution?

Answer 1

There are numerous ways you can approach this problem. For me personally while using Python, I would find a dictionary convenient for this problem since it can store mappings of multi-dimensional data and keep track of the total of bread size, type of each bread, and each filling well.

NOTE: If you prefer to approach the problem yourself, try looking into dictionaries and see how you can potentially use that to store your data and don't read further - since below I've given you an example solution.

Feel free to message me or schedule a lesson if you want to learn more or if you have further questions!

Here's one way you can structure it in Python:

# Initialize basic dictionary for ordering service data

ordering_service_data = {

"orders": {},

"bread_size": {

"30cm": 0

"15cm": 0

},

"bread_type": {

"white": 0,

"brown": 0,

"seeded": 0

},

"filling": {

"beef": 0,

"chicken": 0,

"cheese": 0,

"egg": 0,

"tuna": 0,

"turkey": 0

}

}

# The above dictionary can be a scalable solution for more sizes, filling types, bread types, etc. You just need to make sure to give the user valid options in your program

# When the user makes an order, append to the dictionary with their order and update the fields as needed. The function below can be one way to do this

def add_order(customer_name, bread_size, bread_type, filling):

# storing orders by using the customer name can be one way or you can generate a unique id to the customer instead, and if they want to cancel that order you can remove their order from the dictionary by using the name or id

order = {

"bread_size": bread_size,

"bread_type": bread_type,

"filling": filling

}

ordering_service_data["orders"][customer_name] = order

# note: if you want to delete this order you can use the following code below

# del ordering_service_data["orders"][customer_name]

# Once you add the order to your data, you also want to increment necessary totals

ordering_service_data["bread_size"][bread_size]+=1

ordering_service_data["bread_type"[bread_type]+=1

ordering_service_data["filling"][filling]+=1

# Finally if you want the service to output the total number of a specific value (e.g. 30cm) of a certain type of category such as bread_size, then the following function can do the trick

def get_total(category, type):

# here category can be bread_size and type can be 30cm for example

return ordering_service_data[category][type]