1 00:00:00,180 --> 00:00:05,550 All right, guys, it's time to put what you've learned to the test. Now in this project, we're going 2 00:00:05,550 --> 00:00:08,220 to be doing a little bit of mail merging. 3 00:00:08,550 --> 00:00:12,630 So mail merging is where you take something like what 4 00:00:12,630 --> 00:00:20,210 we have a list of names, for example, and we want to insert each of these names into a letter. 5 00:00:20,490 --> 00:00:26,040 So instead of saying dear [name], you are invited to my birthday the Saturday, it should say dear 6 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:29,240 and then it would replace that with whatever is here. 7 00:00:29,580 --> 00:00:31,710 Take a look at this example file. 8 00:00:32,040 --> 00:00:38,070 You can see that it replaced the name placeholder with the first name in the invited_names.txt 9 00:00:38,070 --> 00:00:38,550 file. 10 00:00:39,060 --> 00:00:42,930 Your objective is to write some python code to automate the process. 11 00:00:43,950 --> 00:00:50,940 So what you're going to end up with is a bunch of letters, one for each of the names inside the invited_ 12 00:00:50,940 --> 00:00:58,590 names.txt and the letters are going to be named like this: letter_for_ and 13 00:00:58,590 --> 00:01:00,120 then the name of the person. 14 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:07,770 And they're going to be saved in a txt format, which you can open either in Google Docs or in Microsoft 15 00:01:07,770 --> 00:01:08,190 Word. 16 00:01:08,670 --> 00:01:10,950 And it's basically ready for printing. 17 00:01:11,530 --> 00:01:16,770 So I've made it a little bit harder for you by adding in a whole bunch of folders. 18 00:01:16,980 --> 00:01:21,330 And each of these files are nested inside a bunch of folders. 19 00:01:21,330 --> 00:01:25,230 So, for example, starting letter is inside letters, which is inside input. 20 00:01:25,770 --> 00:01:31,500 And then the letters that you're going to generate are going to need to go into this folder called Ready 21 00:01:31,500 --> 00:01:35,430 ToSend, which is inside output. And no cheating. 22 00:01:35,430 --> 00:01:38,010 I don't want you moving around any of these files. 23 00:01:38,160 --> 00:01:44,730 You're going to be using what you've learned about directories and file paths to do everything without 24 00:01:44,730 --> 00:01:47,850 needing to drag and drop or move anything around manually. 25 00:01:48,750 --> 00:01:50,340 I've got some starting files for you. 26 00:01:50,430 --> 00:01:56,520 So the first thing I want you to do is to go to the course resources and download the zip file, which 27 00:01:56,520 --> 00:01:58,140 will be your starting project code. 28 00:01:58,740 --> 00:02:05,130 Once you open it within PyCharm, it's going to ask you to configure the interpreter. So you can either 29 00:02:05,130 --> 00:02:10,229 go ahead and click on that pop-up, or if it disappears, then just click on the event log and then click 30 00:02:10,229 --> 00:02:15,330 on Configure Python Interpreter and then select the latest interpreter that you have installed. 31 00:02:15,660 --> 00:02:19,200 So in my case, it's 3.8, but by the time you're watching this, it'll probably be 32 00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:21,120 3.9 or even later. 33 00:02:21,660 --> 00:02:27,290 And once that's done, then you can go ahead and have a look inside main.py. 34 00:02:27,840 --> 00:02:30,030 So here I've got some instructions for you. 35 00:02:30,540 --> 00:02:36,750 First, you're going to create a letter using the starting_letter.txt, which is right here 36 00:02:36,750 --> 00:02:43,130 nested two folders deep, and then you're going to use each of the names inside invited_names. 37 00:02:43,140 --> 00:02:52,320 txt to replace the part where it says name with the actual names that you see in invited_names.txt. 38 00:02:53,190 --> 00:02:58,200 And then you're going to save each of those letters that you've generated inside the folder ReadyTo 39 00:02:58,200 --> 00:02:58,620 Send. 40 00:02:59,310 --> 00:03:05,250 And you can take a look at the example if you want to see what the final outcome looks like. 41 00:03:05,260 --> 00:03:10,030 So it's going to be the name without any spaces afterwards, just a comma. 42 00:03:10,770 --> 00:03:14,850 Now there's going to be a few things that will trip you up along the way. 43 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:21,240 And I'm hoping that you're going to use your knowledge about how to get help from Google and Stack overflow, 44 00:03:21,600 --> 00:03:24,690 as well as some of these hints that I've left in here for you. 45 00:03:25,260 --> 00:03:32,520 So the hints take you to three pages of Python documentation, and they're chosen because the methods 46 00:03:32,550 --> 00:03:36,200 that are featured in them will definitely help you in this project. 47 00:03:36,450 --> 00:03:41,670 In fact, some of the things that you're going to try to do won't be possible unless you take a look 48 00:03:41,670 --> 00:03:46,920 at each of these pages of documentation, read through it, and understand what the methods do. 49 00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:53,490 Now, as always, with a lot of tutorials, it's impossible to teach you every single method. 50 00:03:53,490 --> 00:03:58,800 And it would be really, really tedious if I just went through all of the methods that are available in Python 51 00:03:59,070 --> 00:04:01,050 and showed them to you individually. 52 00:04:01,530 --> 00:04:08,190 So instead, you have to work just as a pro developer does which is to find out information when you 53 00:04:08,190 --> 00:04:14,940 need it and to quickly understand what's happening and how to use the information you found on the fly. 54 00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:21,750 Don't worry if you haven't seen me use these methods before. You will get more practice by using 55 00:04:21,750 --> 00:04:27,200 the documentation, figuring things out yourself, and implementing things that you haven't seen before. 56 00:04:28,080 --> 00:04:35,490 Once you're ready, go ahead and take a look at each of these links, see what each of the methods I've 57 00:04:35,490 --> 00:04:40,830 linked to does, and then go ahead and try to tackle this challenge. 58 00:04:41,250 --> 00:04:44,100 So pause the video and I'll see you on the other side.