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Level 2 / Project 05 - Text Report Generator

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Try in Browser: Run this exercise online — no installation needed!

Before You Start

Recall these prerequisites before diving in: - Can you use zip() to pair two lists together? - Can you group items from a list into a dictionary of lists?

Estimated time: 35 minutes

Learn Your Way

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Concept This project — Quiz Flashcards Diagram Browser

Focus

  • build readable reports from records

Why this project exists

This project gives you level-appropriate practice in a realistic operations context. Goal: run the baseline, alter behavior, break one assumption, recover safely, and explain the fix.

Run (copy/paste)

Use <repo-root> as the folder containing this repository's README.md.

cd <repo-root>/projects/level-2/05-text-report-generator
python project.py data/sample_input.txt --group department --value salary
python project.py data/sample_input.txt --json
pytest -q

Expected terminal output

============================================================
  Data Report
============================================================
Total records: 10
Breakdown by department: ...
9 passed

Expected artifacts

  • Formatted text report on stdout
  • Passing tests
  • Updated notes.md

Checkpoint: Baseline code runs and all tests pass. Commit your work before continuing.

Alter it (required) — Extension

  1. Add a --sort-by flag to sort groups by total, mean, or count.
  2. Add a "Bottom 5" section alongside the "Top 5" section.
  3. Add a --output flag to save the report to a file.

Break it (required) — Core

  1. Feed a CSV where the salary column has some non-numeric values (e.g. "N/A").
  2. Feed a CSV with mismatched column counts (some rows have more/fewer fields).
  3. Use a group field that does not exist in the header.

Fix it (required) — Core

  1. Ensure extract_numeric handles "N/A" and blank values without crashing.
  2. Handle rows with missing fields by padding with empty strings.
  3. Show "UNKNOWN" when a group field is missing from a record.

Checkpoint: All modifications done, tests still pass. Good time to review your changes.

Explain it (teach-back)

  1. How does zip(headers, values) pair headers with values?
  2. Why is sorted(groups.keys()) used instead of iterating groups directly?
  3. What does dict.get(key, default) do differently from dict[key]?
  4. When would you choose text reports over JSON output?

Mastery check

You can move on when you can: - explain how zip works with unequal-length lists, - write a group_by function from memory, - add a new statistic (e.g. median) to the report, - format output with consistent column alignment.

Stuck? Ask AI

If you are stuck after trying for 20 minutes, use one of these prompts:

  • "I am working on Text Report Generator. I got this error: [paste error]. Can you explain what this error means without giving me the fix?"
  • "I am trying to group records by a field value. Can you show me how to build a dictionary of lists from a flat list, using a different example like grouping students by grade?"
  • "Can you explain how zip(headers, values) works when the lists have different lengths?"
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