Alright, so the other day I wanted to figure out my Chinese zodiac sign, you know, the animal and all that. I thought it would be cool to have a little tool to do it for me, so I decided to build a Chinese zodiac calculator.
First, I looked around the internet for some ideas on how these things work. I found a few websites that had online calculators, and they all seemed pretty simple. You just punch in your birth year, and boom, it tells you your zodiac animal. I also noticed some sites asked for your full birth date, which I guess is to get a more precise reading based on the lunar calendar.
I wanted to make mine simple, so I started with just the birth year. I grabbed a piece of paper and jotted down the 12 zodiac animals and their corresponding years. For example, if you were born in 1990, you’re a Horse. I did this for a whole bunch of years to cover most people.
Then, I thought, “How am I going to actually build this?” I’m not a pro coder or anything, but I know a little bit of HTML and JavaScript. So, I opened up my code editor and started messing around. I made a simple HTML form with an input box for the birth year and a button to submit it.
Next, I wrote some JavaScript code to handle the calculation. I created an array to store the zodiac animals and their years. When someone enters their birth year and clicks the button, the code checks the year against the array and finds the matching animal.
After a bit of trial and error, I got it working! I typed in my birth year, hit the button, and there it was – my Chinese zodiac animal. I tested it with a few other years, and it seemed to be accurate.
I was pretty happy with my little calculator, but then I thought it would be cool to add the full birth date option too. So, I went back to the drawing board. I added more input boxes for the month and day, and I had to figure out how to convert the Gregorian date to the lunar date. That was a bit tricky, but I found some helpful information online and managed to write a function to do it.
Finally, I updated the code to use the lunar date to determine the zodiac sign. This made it even more precise. I tested it with a few different birth dates, and it worked like a charm.
Now, I have a fully functioning Chinese zodiac calculator that can determine your zodiac sign based on either your birth year or your full birth date. It’s not the most beautiful thing in the world, but it works, and I’m pretty proud of it.
- Step 1: Gathered information about how Chinese zodiac signs are calculated.
- Step 2: Created a simple HTML form for inputting birth year.
- Step 3: Wrote JavaScript code to determine the zodiac animal based on the birth year.
- Step 4: Tested and refined the calculator.
- Step 5: Added input fields for month and day to calculate based on the full birth date.
- Step 6: Wrote a function to convert Gregorian date to lunar date.
- Step 7: Updated the code to use the lunar date for zodiac calculation.
- Step 8: Tested the calculator with various birth dates to ensure accuracy.
I shared my calculator with a few friends, and they thought it was pretty cool. I might try to make it look a little nicer later on and maybe even add some more features, but for now, it’s a fun little tool that I can use to find out anyone’s Chinese zodiac sign.
It’s a good feeling when you build something with your own hands and it works as expected. This experience has motivated me to keep learning and building more things. Maybe one day I’ll even create a more sophisticated and feature-rich version of this calculator. But for now, I’m happy with my simple yet effective creation.
