Creating a Rally Scoreboard Application using Java

I recently undertook an invigorating project that combines my love for rally racing and software development. The task at its core was simple – to design a Rally Scoreboard application using Java. The primary feature of this application is to track and display player scores and times during a rally. The purpose of this blog post is to walk you through my design approach and share some snippets of the Java code that went into implementing this project.

In the beginning, I had to establish the rudimentary elements or attributes that one would expect in such an application. Certainly, it would need to accommodate various players with their scores, countries, car models, and respective stage times. Structuring these data points, I decided to create a RallyPlayer class. Using object-oriented programming (OOP), this class represents a player that participates in the rally.

“`java

public class RallyPlayer {
    private String name;
    private String country;
    private String carModel;
    private int score;
    private ArrayList<Double> stageTimes; // in minutes

    // constructors, getters, and setters omitted for brevity
}

“`

Depending on the number of rally players, the application would need to handle and store multiple RallyPlayer instances. Therefore, I created a RallyScoreboard class that employs ArrayList to contain instances of RallyPlayer. This works as the main container for all players.

“`java

public class RallyScoreboard {
    private ArrayList<RallyPlayer> players;

    public RallyScoreboard() {
        this.players = new ArrayList<>();
    }

    public void addPlayer(RallyPlayer player) {
        players.add(player);
    }

    // other methods omitted for brevity
}

“`

To display player scores in the application, I incorporated a method in the RallyScoreboard class. This method iterates through the RallyPlayer instances stored in the players ArrayList, pulling and displaying each player's details and current score. The printed results would give the name, country, car model, score, and each of their stage times eloquently.

“`java

public void displayScores() {
    for (RallyPlayer player : players) {
        System.out.println("Name: " + player.getName());
        System.out.println("Country: " + player.getCountry());
        System.out.println("Car Model: " + player.getCarModel());
        System.out.println("Score: " + player.getScore());
        System.out.print("Stage Times: ");
        for (Double time : player.getStageTimes()) {
            System.out.print(time + " ");
        }
        System.out.println("\n");
    }
}

“`

In conclusion, the Rally Scoreboard application was an exciting project that allowed me to delve into OOP with Java. It illustrates the efficiency and elegance of Java in designing such practical applications. These pieces of code that I developed for this project are generic and flexible, which means they can be extended or modified to catered to other types of racing sports as well. This has indeed been a rally fascinating journey. Next up, I am considering adding a feature for live updates or maybe integrating an API to get real-world data. Many more challenges to conquer, many more miles to code!