We'll cover the following:
A Car Rental System is a software built to handle the renting of automobiles for a short period of time, generally ranging from a few hours to a few weeks. A car rental system often has numerous local branches (to allow its user to return a vehicle to a different location), and primarily located near airports or busy city areas.
Car Rental System
We will focus on the following set of requirements while designing our Car Rental System:
- The system will support the renting of different automobiles like cars, trucks, SUVs, vans, and motorcycles.
- Each vehicle should be added with a unique barcode and other details, including a parking stall number which helps to locate the vehicle.
- The system should be able to retrieve information like which member took a particular vehicle or what vehicles have been rented out by a specific member.
- The system should collect a late-fee for vehicles returned after the due date.
- Members should be able to search the vehicle inventory and reserve any available vehicle.
- The system should be able to send notifications whenever the reservation is approaching the pick-up date, as well as when the vehicle is nearing the due date or has not been returned within the due date.
- The system will be able to read barcodes from vehicles.
- Members should be able to cancel their reservations.
- The system should maintain a vehicle log to track all events related to the vehicles.
- Members can add rental insurance to their reservation.
- Members can rent additional equipment, like navigation, child seat, ski rack, etc.
- Members can add additional services to their reservation, such as roadside assistance, additional driver, wifi, etc.
We have four main Actors in our system:
- Receptionist: Mainly responsible for adding and modifying vehicles and workers. Receptionists can also reserve vehicles.
- Member: All members can search the catalog, as well as reserve, pick-up, and return a vehicle.
- System: Mainly responsible for sending notifications about overdue vehicles, canceled reservation, etc.
- Worker: Mainly responsible for taking care of a returned vehicle and updating the vehicle log.
Here are the top use cases of the Car Rental System:
- Add/Remove/Edit vehicle: To add, remove or modify a vehicle.
- Search catalog: To search for vehicles by type and availability.
- Register new account/Cancel membership: To add a new member or cancel an existing membership.
- Reserve vehicle: To reserve a vehicle.
- Check-out vehicle: To rent a vehicle.
- Return a vehicle: To return a vehicle which was checked-out to a member.
- Add equipment: To add an equipment to a reservation like navigation, child seat, etc.
- Update car log: To add or update a car log entry, such as refueling, cleaning, damage, etc.
Here is the use case diagram of our Car Rental System:
Use Case Diagram for Car Rental System
Here are the main classes of our Car Rental System:
- CarRentalSystem: The main part of the organization for which this software has been designed.
- CarRentalLocation: The car rental system will have multiple locations, each location will have attributes like ‘Name’ to distinguish it from any other locations and ‘Address’ which defines the address of the rental location.
- Vehicle: The basic building block of the system. Every vehicle will have a barcode, license plate number, passenger capacity, model, make, mileage, etc. Vehicles can be of multiple types, like car, truck, SUV, etc.
- Account: Mainly, we will have two types of accounts in the system, one will be a general member and the other will be a receptionist. Another account can be of the worker taking care of the returned vehicle.
- VehicleReservation: This class will be responsible for managing reservations for a vehicle.
- Notification: Will take care of sending notifications to members.
- VehicleLog: To keep track of all the events related to a vehicle.
- RentalInsurance: Stores details about the various rental insurances that members can add to their reservation.
- Equipment: Stores details about the various types of equipment that members can add to their reservation.
- Service: Stores details about the various types of service that members can add to their reservation, such as additional drivers, roadside assistance, etc.
- Bill: Contains different bill-items for every charge for the reservation.
Class Diagram for Car Rental System
UML for Car Rental System
Pick up a vehicle: Any member can perform this activity. Here are the steps to pick up a vehicle:
Activity Diagram for Car Rental System Pick Up
Return a vehicle: Any worker can perform this activity. While returning a vehicle, the system must collect a late fee from the member if the return date is after the due date. Here are the steps for returning a vehicle:
Activity Diagram for Car Rental System Return
Here is the high-level definition for the classes described above.
Enums, data types and constants: Here are the required enums, data types, and constants:
from enum import Enum
class BillItemType(Enum):
BASE_CHARGE, ADDITIONAL_SERVICE, FINE, OTHER = 1, 2, 3, 4
class VehicleLogType(Enum):
ACCIDENT, FUELING, CLEANING_SERVICE, OIL_CHANGE, REPAIR, OTHER = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
class VanType(Enum):
PASSENGER, CARGO = 1, 2
class CarType(Enum):
ECONOMY, COMPACT, INTERMEDIATE, STANDARD, FULL_SIZE, PREMIUM, LUXURY = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
class VehicleStatus(Enum):
AVAILABLE, RESERVED, LOANED, LOST, BEING_SERVICED, OTHER = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
class ReservationStatus(Enum):
ACTIVE, PENDING, CONFIRMED, COMPLETED, CANCELLED, NONE = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
class AccountStatus(Enum):
ACTIVE, CLOSED, CANCELED, BLACKLISTED, BLOCKED = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
class PaymentStatus(Enum):
UNPAID, PENDING, COMPLETED, FILLED, DECLINED, CANCELLED, ABANDONED, SETTLING, SETTLED, REFUNDED = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
class Address:
def __init__(self, street, city, state, zip_code, country):
self.__street_address = street
self.__city = city
self.__state = state
self.__zip_code = zip_code
self.__country = country
class Person():
def __init__(self, name, address, email, phone):
self.__name = name
self.__address = address
self.__email = email
self.__phone = phoneAccount, Member, Receptionist, and Additional Driver: These classes represent different people that interact with our system:
from abc import ABC
from .constants import AccountStatus
# For simplicity, we are not defining getter and setter functions. The reader can
# assume that all class attributes are private and accessed through their respective
# public getter methods and modified only through their public methods function.
class Account(ABC):
def __init__(self, id, password, person, status=AccountStatus.NONE):
self.__id = id
self.__password = password
self.__status = AccountStatus.NONE
self.__person = person
def reset_password(self):
None
class Member(Account):
def __init__(self):
self.__total_vehicles_reserved = 0
def get_reservations(self):
None
class Receptionist(Account):
def __init__(self, date_joined):
self.__date_joined = date_joined
def search_member(self, name):
None
class AdditionalDriver:
def __init__(self, id, person):
self.__driver_id = id
self.__person = personCarRentalSystem and CarRentalLocation: These classes represent the top level classes:
class CarRentalLocation:
def __init__(self, name, address):
self.__name = name
self.__location = address
def get_location(self):
return self.__location
class CarRentalSystem:
def __init__(self, name):
self.__name = name
self.__locations = []
def add_new_location(self, location):
NoneVehicle, VehicleLog, and VehicleReservation: To encapsulate a vehicle, log, and reservation. The VehicleReservation class will be responsible for processing the reservation and return of a vehicle:
from abc import ABC
from datetime import datetime
from .constants import ReservationStatus
class Vehicle(ABC):
def __init__(self, license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode, has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year,
mileage):
self.__license_number = license_num
self.__stock_number = stock_num
self.__passenger_capacity = capacity
self.__barcode = barcode
self.__has_sunroof = has_sunroof
self.__status = status
self.__model = model
self.__make = make
self.__manufacturing_year = manufacturing_year
self.__mileage = mileage
self.__log = []
def reserve_vehicle(self):
None
def return_vehicle(self):
None
class Car(Vehicle):
def __init__(self, license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode, has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year,
mileage, type):
super().__init__(license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode,
has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year, mileage)
self.__type = type
class Van(Vehicle):
def __init__(self, license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode, has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year,
mileage, type):
super().__init__(license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode,
has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year, mileage)
self.__type = type
class Truck(Vehicle):
def __init__(self, license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode, has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year,
mileage, type):
super().__init__(license_num, stock_num, capacity, barcode,
has_sunroof, status, model, make, manufacturing_year, mileage)
self.__type = type
# We can have similar definition for other vehicle types
# ...
class VehicleLog:
def __init__(self, id, type, description, creation_date):
self.__id = id
self.__type = type
self.__description = description
self.__creation_date = creation_date
def update(self):
None
def search_by_log_type(self, type):
None
class VehicleReservation:
def __init__(self, reservation_number):
self.__reservation_number = reservation_number
self.__creation_date = datetime.date.today()
self.__status = ReservationStatus.ACTIVE
self.__due_date = datetime.date.today()
self.__return_date = datetime.date.today()
self.__pickup_location_name = ""
self.__return_location_name = ""
self.__customer_id = 0
self.__vehicle = None
self.__bill = None
self.__additional_drivers = []
self.__notifications = []
self.__insurances = []
self.__equipments = []
self.__services = []
def fetch_reservation_details(self, reservation_number):
None
def get_additional_drivers(self):
return self.__additional_driversVehicleInventory and Search: VehicleInventory will implement an interface ‘Search’ to facilitate the searching of vehicles:
from abc import ABC
class Search(ABC):
def search_by_type(self, type):
None
def search_by_model(self, model):
None
class VehicleInventory(Search):
def __init__(self):
self.__vehicle_types = {}
self.__vehicle_models = {}
def search_by_type(self, query):
# return all vehicles of the given type.
return self.__vehicle_types.get(query)
def search_by_model(self, query):
# return all vehicles of the given model.
return self.__vehicle_models.get(query)