WEBVTT 0 00:00.180 --> 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 1 00:05.550 --> 00:08.220 to be doing a little bit of mail merging. 2 00:08.550 --> 00:12.630 So mail merging is where you take something like what 3 00:12.630 --> 00:20.210 we have a list of names, for example, and we want to insert each of these names into a letter. 4 00:20.490 --> 00:26.040 So instead of saying dear [name], you are invited to my birthday the Saturday, it should say dear 5 00:26.040 --> 00:29.240 and then it would replace that with whatever is here. 6 00:29.580 --> 00:31.710 Take a look at this example file. 7 00:32.040 --> 00:38.070 You can see that it replaced the name placeholder with the first name in the invited_names.txt 8 00:38.070 --> 00:38.550 file. 9 00:39.060 --> 00:42.930 Your objective is to write some python code to automate the process. 10 00:43.950 --> 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_ 11 00:50.940 --> 00:58.590 names.txt and the letters are going to be named like this: letter_for_ and 12 00:58.590 --> 01:00.120 then the name of the person. 13 01:00.360 --> 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 14 01:07.770 --> 01:08.190 Word. 15 01:08.670 --> 01:10.950 And it's basically ready for printing. 16 01:11.530 --> 01:16.770 So I've made it a little bit harder for you by adding in a whole bunch of folders. 17 01:16.980 --> 01:21.330 And each of these files are nested inside a bunch of folders. 18 01:21.330 --> 01:25.230 So, for example, starting letter is inside letters, which is inside input. 19 01:25.770 --> 01:31.500 And then the letters that you're going to generate are going to need to go into this folder called Ready 20 01:31.500 --> 01:35.430 ToSend, which is inside output. And no cheating. 21 01:35.430 --> 01:38.010 I don't want you moving around any of these files. 22 01:38.160 --> 01:44.730 You're going to be using what you've learned about directories and file paths to do everything without 23 01:44.730 --> 01:47.850 needing to drag and drop or move anything around manually. 24 01:48.750 --> 01:50.340 I've got some starting files for you. 25 01:50.430 --> 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 26 01:56.520 --> 01:58.140 will be your starting project code. 27 01:58.740 --> 02:05.130 Once you open it within PyCharm, it's going to ask you to configure the interpreter. So you can either 28 02:05.130 --> 02:10.230 go ahead and click on that pop-up, or if it disappears, then just click on the event log and then click 29 02:10.230 --> 02:15.330 on Configure Python Interpreter and then select the latest interpreter that you have installed. 30 02:15.660 --> 02:19.200 So in my case, it's 3.8, but by the time you're watching this, it'll probably be 31 02:19.200 --> 02:21.120 3.9 or even later. 32 02:21.660 --> 02:27.290 And once that's done, then you can go ahead and have a look inside main.py. 33 02:27.840 --> 02:30.030 So here I've got some instructions for you. 34 02:30.540 --> 02:36.750 First, you're going to create a letter using the starting_letter.txt, which is right here 35 02:36.750 --> 02:43.130 nested two folders deep, and then you're going to use each of the names inside invited_names. 36 02:43.140 --> 02:52.320 txt to replace the part where it says name with the actual names that you see in invited_names.txt. 37 02:53.190 --> 02:58.200 And then you're going to save each of those letters that you've generated inside the folder ReadyTo 38 02:58.200 --> 02:58.620 Send. 39 02:59.310 --> 03:05.250 And you can take a look at the example if you want to see what the final outcome looks like. 40 03:05.260 --> 03:10.030 So it's going to be the name without any spaces afterwards, just a comma. 41 03:10.770 --> 03:14.850 Now there's going to be a few things that will trip you up along the way. 42 03:15.000 --> 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, 43 03:21.600 --> 03:24.690 as well as some of these hints that I've left in here for you. 44 03:25.260 --> 03:32.520 So the hints take you to three pages of Python documentation, and they're chosen because the methods 45 03:32.550 --> 03:36.200 that are featured in them will definitely help you in this project. 46 03:36.450 --> 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 47 03:41.670 --> 03:46.920 at each of these pages of documentation, read through it, and understand what the methods do. 48 03:47.520 --> 03:53.490 Now, as always, with a lot of tutorials, it's impossible to teach you every single method. 49 03:53.490 --> 03:58.800 And it would be really, really tedious if I just went through all of the methods that are available in Python 50 03:59.070 --> 04:01.050 and showed them to you individually. 51 04:01.530 --> 04:08.190 So instead, you have to work just as a pro developer does which is to find out information when you 52 04:08.190 --> 04:14.940 need it and to quickly understand what's happening and how to use the information you found on the fly. 53 04:15.480 --> 04:21.750 Don't worry if you haven't seen me use these methods before. You will get more practice by using 54 04:21.750 --> 04:27.200 the documentation, figuring things out yourself, and implementing things that you haven't seen before. 55 04:28.080 --> 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 56 04:35.490 --> 04:40.830 linked to does, and then go ahead and try to tackle this challenge. 57 04:41.250 --> 04:44.100 So pause the video and I'll see you on the other side.