Digital Clock, In Class App
===========================


Contents
--------

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1


Indices and tables
------------------

* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`modindex`
* :ref:`search`



Exercise Overview
-----------------

For this week, the goal is to create an app that will display the current time in the terminal using a digital clock face.

The app should have the following functionality:

   * Clear the terminal

   * Fetch the current time from the system

   * Parse the hr:min:sec:am|pm fields out

   * Print the hr:min:sec:am|pm fields to the screen to resemble a digital clock
        
         * A good reference for unicode blocks is `here <UnicodeBlocks_>`_, though note that not all of them will make good pixel replica.

   * Sleep for 1 second and repeat...


This will require the :py:class:`~datetime.datetime` class from :py:mod:`datetime` package and the :py:func:`~time.sleep` method from the :py:mod:`time` package.

You should setup a project in PyCharm in order to make debugging your app as simple as possible.


Stub Code
---------

To allow you to focus on the main kernel of the program, some stub code has been created with the following functions in it:

   * :py:func:`gen_font_table` - Generates a font table containing 8x8 characters. The font table is a dictionary, keyed by character / digit, with each character a 2-dimensional list of pixels. A pixel value of 0 represents off and a pixel value of 1 represents on. For example:

    .. code-block:: python

       tbl = {}
       tbl["0"] = ((0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0),
                   (0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0),
                   (0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0),
                   (0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0),
                   (0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0),
                   (0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0),
                   (0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0),
                   (0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0),)


   * :py:func:`clear_screen` - Handles sending the ASCII escape character to the terminal that clears the screen.

    .. note:: The terminal in PyCharm does not handle all ASCII terminal codes and so the :py:func:`clear_screen` method may not work in PyCharm for you. Instead, the text will just scroll vertically. If you run your app in a standalone Python interpreter, the :py:func:`clear_screen` method should work correctly.


You can find the stub code :download:`here <digital_clock_inclass_app_stub.py>`.


Datetime
--------

A description of using the datetime module can be found :ref:`here <section_heading-datatime_Class>`



Solution
--------

When you are ready to see one possible solution, try :download:`this file <digital_clock_inclass_app.py>`

.. _UnicodeBlocks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-drawing_character