Chapter 8, Problem 17PC

Theater Ticket Sales

Create a TicketManager class and a program that uses it to sell tickets for a single performance theater production. This project is intended to be designed and written by a team of two to four students. Here are some suggestions:

• One student might design and write the client program that uses the class, while other team members design and write the TicketManager class and all of its functions.

• Each student should be given about the same workload.

• The class design and the names, parameters, and return types of each function should be decided in advance.

• The project can be implemented as a multiple program, or all the functions can be cut and pasted into a single file.

Here are the specifications:

• The theater’s auditorium has 15 rows, with 30 seats in each row. To represent the seats, the TicketManager class should have a two-dimensional array of SeatStructures. Each of these structures should have data members to keep track of the seat's price and whether or not it is available or already sold.

• The data for the program is to be read in from two files located in the Chapter 8 programs folder on this book's companion website. The first one, SeatPrices. dat, contains 15 values representing the price for each row. All seats in a given row are the same price, but different rows have different prices. The second file, SeatAvai1abi1ity. dat, holds the seat availability information. It contains 450 characters (15 rows with 30 characters each), indicating which seats have been sold (‘*’) and which are available (‘#’). Initially all seats are available. However, once the program runs and the file is updated, some of the seats will have been sold. The obvious function to read in the data from these files and set up the array is the constructor that runs when the TicketManager object is first created.

• The client program should be a menu-driven program that provides the user with a menu of box office options, accepts and validates user inputs, and calls appropriate class functions to carry out desired tasks. The menu should have options to display the seating chart, request tickets, print a sales report, and exit the program.

• When the user selects the display seats menu option, a TicketManager function should be called that creates and returns a string holding a chart, similar to the one shown here. It should indicate which seats are already sold (#) and which are still available for purchase (#). The client program should then display the string.