Product: E-Search (eStoreSearch)

Status: baseline — intended behaviour for the console catalog. Implementation lives in estore.EStoreSearch and related model classes.

Problem

A store operator needs to keep a small catalog of books and electronics, load it from a text file, add items, find items by ID, name keywords, and year, and save the catalog when they leave.

Users and environment

• Operator at a terminal (no GUI, no network).
• Java 8+ console app; Maven artifact main class estore.EStoreSearch.
• Persistence is plain text, not a database.

Launch

• Command: java -cp target/classes estore.EStoreSearch <catalog-file>
• Argument: exactly one path. Missing argument → print Not enough arguments and exit.
• Missing file: print Problem opening files and exit.
• After a successful open, load records, then show the main menu until quit.

Catalog records

Every product has: 6-digit productID, non-empty name, year in 1000–9999, price (non-negative number; blank on add means 0.0).

• Book: authors, publisher (optional).
• Electronics: maker (optional).

IDs are unique in the in-memory catalog. Adding an ID that already exists must be rejected and the operator re-prompted.

File format (import)

Line-oriented key = "value" records. A blank line ends a record and creates the product.

Key	Used by
type	book or electronics
productID	both
name	both
price	both
year	both
authors	book
publisher	book
maker	electronics

Values are wrapped in double quotes. Missing optional fields become empty strings. After load, each product name is indexed: split on spaces, keys stored lowercase, values are indexes into the product list.

Main menu

Prompt:

-------Welcome to E-Search --------
Select the numbers or type command corresponding to the options below: (1)Add (2)Search (3)Quit

Operator input	Action
1, add, a	Add
2, search, s	Search
3, quit, q	Export and exit

Matching is case-insensitive after trim. Invalid input: *** enter only numbers or commands *** and re-prompt.

Add

1. (1)Book or (2)Electronics (numeric only).
2. Collect ID, year, name, price (shared validation).
3. Book: author, publisher (blank allowed). Electronics: maker (blank allowed).
4. Append to the catalog, update the name index, print a confirmation line.

Search

Prompt: Enter the specs and find the matching product. Then three optional filters (each Yes=1 / No=2):

1. Product ID — if yes, 6 digits.
2. Name — if yes, non-empty string; case-insensitive; multiple words mean all tokens must appear in the product name.
3. Year — if yes, one of: YYYY, -YYYY, YYYY-, YYYY-YYYY.

A product is printed only if it matches all provided filters. Omitted filters do not constrain that dimension. Results use the human-readable datadump line (ID, name, year, price, plus author/publisher or maker).

Quit

Write the full catalog to java.txt in the working directory (overwrite). Format is the quoted type / productID / … blocks from each product’s toString(). Print Successful write to file (or Unable to open file and exit). Then process exits.

Out of scope (this baseline)s

• GUI, web API, multi-user, or database.
• Search by author, publisher, or maker.
• Deleting or editing products.
• Writing back to the original input path (unless a later spec changes this).

Acceptance (baseline)

• App starts only with one file argument and loads quoted key = "value" records separated by blank lines.
• Main menu accepts number, word, and short aliases for add/search/quit.
• Add enforces unique 6-digit IDs, required name, 4-digit year, numeric price.
• Search can filter by ID, name keywords (AND, case-insensitive), and year exact/range/open-ended.
• Quit writes java.txt in the import-compatible quoted format.