Data formatting issue : Array to Object. any easy way?

Question

I tried to format a array to object. it's working fine but I need to know, Is this correct or wrong? any other standard way to do this?.

I used underscoreJS for this.

//What I get from API

"A/a/1" = A -> Category, a -> Subcategory, 1 -> child of subcategory.

["A", "A/a", "A/b", "A/a/1", "A/a/2", "B", "B/a"];

//Which format i need.

[
   {
      "name":"A",
      "parent":"",
      "children":[
         {
            "name":"a",
            "parent":"A",
            "children":[
               {
                  "name":"1",
                  "parent":"a",
                  "children":[

                  ]
               },
               {
                  "name":"2",
                  "parent":"a",
                  "children":[

                  ]
               }
            ]
         },
         {
            "name":"b",
            "parent":"A",
            "children":[

            ]
         }
      ]
   },
   {
      "name":"B",
      "parent":"",
      "children":[
         {
            "name":"a",
            "parent":"B",
            "children":[

            ]
         }
      ]
   }
]

MY CODE :

var dataObj = function(){
        this.name = "";
        this.parent = "";
        this.administrator = "";
        this.children = [];
      };


  var d_ = []; 

  _.each(data, function(item, index){

        var row = new dataObj();
        var item_array = item.split("/"),
            item_array_length = item_array.length;

          if(item_array.length  == 1){

            row.name = item_array[0];
            d_.push(row);

          } else {

              row.name = item_array[1];
              row.parent = item_array[0];
              var newC = d_[_.findIndex(d_, {name:item_array[0]})];

            if(item_array.length  == 2) {

              newC.children.push(row);

            } else if(item_array.length  == 3) {


              newC.children[_.findIndex(newC.children, {name: item_array[1]})]
                  .children.push({name : item_array[2], parent : item_array[1]});


            }


          }

  });

UPDATE The level of subcategory is not limited. "A/a/1/i/n/x/y...."

Answer 1

I feel your implementation can be improved. Following are the few possibilities:

1. To reduce the processing time the return data structure of the API can be of the form ["A/b", "A/a/1", "A/a/2", "B/a"] instead of ["A", "A/a", "A/b", "A/a/1", "A/a/2", "B", "B/a"]
2. _ library does not seem helping much, the code can be implemented in plain javaScript.
3. The implementation can be made generic enough to handle any level of nested children. The current implementation is limited to level 3.

A simple algorithm I can think of would consist of the following high level steps:

1. Let's call the data served from API as sampleArray.
2. for each element of sampleArray we have currentSplittedElementArray = sampleArray[i].split('/');
3. Let's call required output as finalOutput
4. loop through the finalOutput and test if the element is already present finalOutput[i].name === currentSplittedElementArray[0]
5. If the element is already present then let's loop through the currentSplittedElementArray and update the same element of the finalOutput with the elements of currentSplittedElementArray. (If the element is not already present on the finalOutput then let's first create the element on the finalOutput and populate it with the elements of currentSplittedElementArray)

I know the above algorithm may seem daunting and the steps outlined will include invoking a function repeatedly in a loop or using some sort of recursion. But this is something I would have done if I were to implement something like this.

I am open to any area of improvement/optimization in my approach.