• Make sure you fork this repository to your own Github, then clone it to your computer
• You will have to download + install Python on your machine
  • If you have a Mac, use brew, otherwise good luck =]
  • After your install is complete, close then open your VSCode/terminal again
  • You can check that the installation worked by typing python in the command line/terminal - this should start an interactive Python runtime (like typing node in the command line)
• From the project root directory, run python main.py to execute the script

This Python script executes a simple task:

• Read a CSV file (like Excel, but just data; no formatting)
  • The file is articles.csv; it has four columns: title, date, category, and author
  • Each row has data about one article; t1 stands for "title1", a1 for "author1" etc
• Store the data in a list (array) of dicts (in Python, objects are called dicts, short for dictionary)
• Filter the data based on some input

• Add a new method to CSV_Manager that reads the CSV and stores it as a single object that maps each author to his/her articles, and each category to all the articles with that category. Ultimately, your data should look like this:

    {
        author1_name: [{data on article1 by author1}, {data on article2 by author1}, {etc}],
        author2_name: [{data on article1 by author2}, {data on article2 by author2}, {etc}],
        etc,
        category1_name: [{data on article1 in category1}, {data on article2 in category1}, {etc}],
        category2_name: [{data on article1 in category2}, {data on article2 in category2}, {etc}],
        etc
    }

• Update the run function in main to handle either the old version or new version of the data
  • For instance, running run('author', 'author2') should work, and running run('author2') should also work and return the same data
  • In other words, you should add another method to Manipulator that can extract the relevant data from your new object in O(1), given either the author name or category name
  • In main, you need to add some code that handles both your new method in Manipulator, and the original find_by method

• Add a filter_by_date method in manipulator - it should filter on the original list of dicts (not on the new one you will create)
• Use pip (the equivalent of npm in Python) to find a package that manages dates for you, use that instead

• The print function is equivalent to console.log
  • That said, debugging works the same on VSCode
• In Python, indentation matters - you will run into syntax errors if you have incorrect indentation
  • Let VSCode take care of this for you with auto-formatting
• The following syntax is known as list comprehension in Python:

nums = [1, 2, 3]
doubleNums = [x * 2 for x in nums]

In this simulation the aim is to expose you to a new programming language, set of conventions, concept (reading files), and to underscore the fact that syntax doesn't matter - you know how to code! So code Python now =]