burgerkati / python-random-quote Goto Github PK

Before we can start writing Python, we need to make sure you have your environment set up. You just need a few things (some of which you might already have!)

• Check that Python is installed
• Check that Git is installed
• Clone this repository on your local machine

Check that Python is installed

Your machine may already have Python, or you might need to install it. We also want to check that the right version of Python is present. To find out, go to your command line terminal and type: python -V

Make sure to use a capital -V or you'll get something very different. If you get an error or have a version less than 3, try this: python3 -V (again with the capital -V).

If you see your Python version displayed, you’re all set. Otherwise, you’ll need to download Python for your operating system. Make sure it's Python 3, as previous versions are deprecated.

Check that Git is installed

We’ll use a similar approach to find out if you already have git installed. From your comment line, type: git --version

If you see your Git version displayed, you’re good to go. Otherwise, you’ll need to download Git for your operating system.

Clone this repository on your local machine

Now we’re getting to the fun stuff. Let’s clone this repository to your local machine so that we can make some edits:
git clone https://github.com/burgerkati/python-random-quote.git

You can also download or clone the repo via SSH from the main repo page.

Close this issue to continue

With your environment ready, let’s get started.

Close this issue and I’ll comment with your next steps!

Now you're ready to start coding. Let's get familiar with the files in our repo:

• README.md: a markdown introduction to this project
• get-quote.py: the file where we'll write our Python code
• quotes.txt: a text file with a list of quotes

Open up get-quote.py and comment out line 2 by removing the # from the beginning of the line. It will look like this:

  print("Keep it logically awesome.")

The two spaces (or one tab) in front of the line is important. Python uses whitespace to organize code. This print line is part of the main() function. But more on that in the next step. First, let's try running that Python script.

Use the Python 3 command to run the script. From the command line, type one of the following:

• python get-quote.py
• python3 get-quote.py

You should see our first quote, the one hard-coded into line 2, printed out in your terminal:
Keep it logically awesome.

Push your changes

You've edited your local code, so you have a more recent version than is stored in this repository. You can check that any time by running: git status

It should show one file modified. Every time we want to send our local changes to GitHub, we need to perform three steps:

1. Add the file(s) with changes: git add get-quote.py
2. Commit the changes: git commit -m "Hello World"
3. Push the changes: git push

Once you've completed these steps, we'll write some more Python.

Now we're ready to really build our quote bot. To test things out, we'll read all the quotes from a file and print the first one.

First, you can remove our test quote, the print statement on line 2. You can either comment it out by adding a # at the start of the line, or remove it completely.

Next, remove the other comments by deleting # from the start of the other four lines to get Python code like this:

  f = open("quotes.txt")
  quotes = f.readlines()
  f.close()

  print(quotes)

Here we are opening the quotes.txt file, reading all the lines into a new variable called quotes, then closing the file (defined by the variable f). Finally, we print out the quotes.

You can run this code and we'll get a dump of all the quotes in the quotes file. That's because Python stored them all in an array, which is a single variable that holds a list of values.

Print the first element of an array

Since we only want one quote, we need to edit our code to print only the first value in the quotes array.

In your code, find the print line and add this special modifier [0] so that the line now reads:
print(quotes[0])

The square brackets tell Python that we want a specific item in the array. Since it starts counting at zero, we've grabbed the first item.

Comment with the first quote

Run your code and copy the value to your clipboard.

Paste the quote as a comment here and I'll follow up with next steps!

Though you've completed this course, there's plenty more to learn. You can even use this program as a place to start.

Here are some ideas for next steps:

• Add some more quotes to your text file
• Print out more than one quote at a time
• Remove that extra line (called a newline) when printing
• Learn about file writing and add quotes programmatically

Give one or more of those a shot, then when you're really ready to move on, close this issue.