🎛️ Section 11: Input Helper + Dashboard UI

📝 Summary (What you will do)

In this section, you will build reusable terminal UI helpers. You will:

  • Create an input helper that validates user choices
  • Build a dashboard function that prints the player’s status
  • Display each pet using the short_stats() method

This gives the game a clean, readable interface.

✅ Checklist (You must complete these)

  • Open pet_manager.py
  • Find the end of the Player class
  • Directly below it, add the input helper and dashboard UI
  • Type the code by hand so you understand how it works

✅ No new constants/settings are added in this section, so you do not need to edit the top-of-file constants.

🎓 Core Concepts (New learning for this section)

1) Input validation loops

Users will sometimes type the wrong thing.
A while True loop keeps asking until the input is valid.

This prevents crashes and makes the UI feel professional.

2) Functions that take a Player

show_dashboard(player: Player) takes the player object so it can:

  • Read the player’s name and level
  • Check how many pets they own
  • Loop through and show each pet’s stats

This is a common pattern: pass in the object you want to display.

3) Building readable dashboards

The dashboard uses:

  • Separator lines (= and -)
  • Consistent formatting
  • One line per pet

This makes it easy to scan the game state at a glance.

💻 Code to Write (Type this by hand in pet_manager.py)

Directions:

  1. Open pet_manager.py
  2. Find the end of the Player class
  3. Directly below it, type the following code by hand:

Code image: s11-code

😀 Emoji Copy/Paste List

Use these emojis exactly as shown in the code:

  • ⚠

🧠 Code Review & Key Concepts (What important lines do)

The input helper

while True:

This keeps the prompt running until valid input is entered.

if choice.isdigit():

This ensures the input is a number before we try to convert it.

The dashboard header

print(f"Player: {player.name}  |  Lv {player.level}  |  Pets: {len(player.animals)}/{player.unlocked_adoptions()}")

This line summarizes the player’s name, level, and pet count all at once.

Showing each pet

print(f"{i}. {pet.short_stats()}{struggling}")

Each pet is printed on one line using short_stats(), and a warning icon appears if the pet is struggling.

🧪 Test File: s11_test.py

✅ Create this file

Create a new file in the same folder as pet_manager.py called:

s11_test.py

💻 Code to write in s11_test.py

Code image: s11-test

🧠 What this test is doing (and how it works)

  • We create a Player and adopt two pets
  • We call show_dashboard() to print the formatted UI
  • You should see a header line and each pet on its own line

✅ Run the test:

python s11_test.py

If the dashboard prints cleanly with pet stats, your UI helpers work.