Nested structures in C++ - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Nested structures

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple program to store information about a book and its author. The author has a name and an age. The book has a title, a year of publication, and an author.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that uses nested structures to store and display information about a book and its author.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a structure called Author with two members: name (string) and age (int).

Create a structure called Book with three members: title (string), year (int), and author (of type Author).

Create a variable myBook of type Book and assign the exact values: title = "The Great Adventure", year = 2020, author name = "John Smith", author age = 45.

Print the book's title, year, author's name, and author's age exactly as shown in the final output.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Nested structures help organize related data clearly, like storing book and author information together.

💼 Career

Understanding nested structures is important for managing complex data in software development, such as databases, file formats, and APIs.

1

Create the nested structures

Define a structure called Author with members name (string) and age (int). Then define a structure called Book with members title (string), year (int), and author (of type Author).

C++

#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

// Define Author and Book structures here

int main() {

    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use struct keyword to define each structure. The Book structure should include an Author type member.

2

Create a variable with exact values

Inside main(), create a variable called myBook of type Book. Assign title to "The Great Adventure", year to 2020, author.name to "John Smith", and author.age to 45.

C++

#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

struct Author {
    string name;
    int age;
};

struct Book {
    string title;
    int year;
    Author author;
};

int main() {
    // Create myBook variable and assign values
    
    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use dot notation to assign values to nested members like myBook.author.name.

3

Print the book and author details

Use cout to print the book's title, year, author's name, and author's age in this exact format:
Title: The Great Adventure
Year: 2020
Author: John Smith
Author Age: 45

C++

#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

struct Author {
    string name;
    int age;
};

struct Book {
    string title;
    int year;
    Author author;
};

int main() {
    Book myBook;
    myBook.title = "The Great Adventure";
    myBook.year = 2020;
    myBook.author.name = "John Smith";
    myBook.author.age = 45;

    // Print book and author details
    
    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Use cout with << to print each line exactly as shown.

4

Display the final output

Run the program and ensure it prints exactly:
Title: The Great Adventure
Year: 2020
Author: John Smith
Author Age: 45

C++

#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

struct Author {
    string name;
    int age;
};

struct Book {
    string title;
    int year;
    Author author;
};

int main() {
    Book myBook;
    myBook.title = "The Great Adventure";
    myBook.year = 2020;
    myBook.author.name = "John Smith";
    myBook.author.age = 45;

    cout << "Title: " << myBook.title << endl;
    cout << "Year: " << myBook.year << endl;
    cout << "Author: " << myBook.author.name << endl;
    cout << "Author Age: " << myBook.author.age << endl;

    // Program output should match exactly

    return 0;
}

Need a hint?

Make sure your output matches exactly, including spaces and line breaks.