Iteration

Goals

Explain the concept and purpose of iteration in programming
Iterate over an array using the .each method

Iteration in Real-World Scenarios

Iteration (or looping for a specified number of times) is the process of repeating a task for each object in a collection. For each of the scenarios below, we’ll walk through using scenarios we are familiar with to demonstrate the concept.

The following example would be programmatically challenging because it would require several steps, but is something a teacher may do every day:

A teacher is grading papers and takes the following steps:

read through the paper
mark the score on top
record score in gradebook
repeat steps 1-3 on next paper until stack is empty

Share Out

What is another real world scenario where we repeat a task for each object in a collection?

Iteration in Programming

We could list tasks all day for the physical world - but what does this actually look like when writing software? Here are some examples:

Sending a marketing email to each email address on the list
Checking each inventory item to see if it includes the users search request
Displaying a row in the table for each friend a user is connected with

As you may notice, each list must have a specific type of data in order for this to work. For the email example, if we had an array that held emails and phone numbers, that may create errors in the code that would stop it from running. That’s why it is a best practice to write arrays in a way that they hold data of the same data type and the same kinds of information!

Iteration can save us a lot of time and code. Consider our names arrays:

names = ["Kenny", "Marisol", "Ruben", "Hanna"]

puts names[0]
puts names[1]
puts names[2]
puts names[3]

If we wanted to take action with each name, we’d have to write that code out 4 times. If we added a name, or 30 names, we’d have to re-write that code for each name added. As you can imagine, this can become very redundant and create oportunities for human error!

`.each` syntax

There are many ways we can write code that iterates - some are better suited for certain situations, and sometimes the decision about which method to use will come down to the developer’s opinions and preferences.

Today, we will use the .each method that is built into Ruby to iterate over arrays!

Let’s explore this example in a repl.it:

names = ["Kenny", "Marisol", "Ruben", "Hanna"]

names.each do |name|
  puts name
end

Try It: Iteration

Go back to your project that has an array for your favorite or most-used app. If you've lost it or want to start with a fresh one, you can use this repl.it!

Use iteration to create similarly formatted output for each element in that array. For the completed_workouts example we've been working with, the output might look something like this (where the string "Great job" was only typed once in the code):

Great job - you completed the 10 min arms workout!
Great job - you completed the 30 min ride workout!
Great job - you completed the 15 min stretch workout!
Great job - you completed the 20 min HIIT workout!

Next: Wrap Up