Ruby: Adding a timer to a simple console quiz app

Question

I'm learning Ruby and as part of the practice, I have implemented a simple quiz app. Its pseudocode is like this

for i in 0..questions.length - 1 do
  puts questions[i]
  $answer = gets.chomp
  if $answer == answers[i]
    correct += 1
  end
end

timer_thread = Thread.new do
  while $answer == nil
    (1..5).each do |number|
      sleep(1)
      number
      if number == 5
        puts "Timer out"
      end
      break if ($answer != nil)
    end
  end
end

What I want is to add a timer of let's say 30 seconds, it should move to the next question and that question should be considered incorrect. I came to know about Time.now but am not sure how I can go about adding it to my program.

Any pointers, please?

Answer 1

You can use timeout. Set your desired timeout in seconds by changing time_to_answer, in this example it is set to 5.

require 'timeout'

questions = [
  "2 + 2 = ?",
  "Who is Amazons CEO?",
]
answers = [
  "4",
  "Jeff Bezos",
]

def ask_question(question, answer, time_to_answer)
  puts "\n=== NEW QUESTION ==="
  puts question
  Timeout::timeout(time_to_answer) do
    user_action = gets.chomp
    return user_action === answer
  end
rescue Timeout::Error
  puts "? time is up! solution: #{answer}"
  return false
end

time_to_answer = 5 # in seconds
score = 0 # initialize score
questions.each_with_index do |question, indx|
  correct = ask_question(question, answers[indx], time_to_answer)
  score += 1 if correct
  puts correct ? "? correct" : "? wrong! correct solution: #{answers[indx]}"
end

puts "\n? Your score is #{score} out of #{questions.size}"

Answer 2

I think that using threads is overhead here

You can use Timeout

As I see you use two arrays for questions and answers, you can zip it with Array#zip

In Ruby we don't like for loop. We use Array#each. BTW for uses each under the hood

Using global variables in the code can lead to a shot in the foot. Use them only when you are absolutely sure that they are needed

So I would suggest refactoring the code like this:

require "timeout"

correct_answers_count = 0
TIMEOUT = 30

questions.zip(answers).each do |question, right_answer|
  puts question

  user_answer = nil

  Timeout::timeout(TIMEOUT) { user_answer = gets.strip }

  if user_answer&.downcase == right_answer&.downcase
    correct_answers_count += 1
    puts "Right!"
  else
    puts "Wrong!"
  end
rescue Timeout::Error
  puts "Time is out"
end

puts "Right answers: #{correct_answers_count}"