How to display flat data structure into hierarchical data structure (Java)?

Question

I have recently faced this question in a practical test for a job .

Suppose you are given a flat data structure like this :

**Category**         **Name**         


        

Answer 1

Here is some sample code that lists them in a hierarchy using recursion. The Item class has a List of children. The trick is adding any new children to the right parent. Here is the method I created to do this:

public Item getItemWithParent(int parentID){
    Item result = null;
    if(this.categoryID == parentID){
        result = this;
    } else {
        for(Item nextChild : children){
            result = nextChild.getItemWithParent(parentID);
            if(result != null){
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return result;
}

There is probably a more efficient way, but this works.

Then, when you want to add new items to your hierarchy, do something like this:

public void addItem(int categoryID, String name, int parentID) {
    Item parentItem = findParent(parentID);
    parentItem.addChild(new Item(categoryID, name, parentID));
}
private Item findParent(int parentID) {
    return rootNode.getItemWithParent(parentID);
}

For the actual display, I just pass in a "tab level" that says how far to tab in, then increment it for each child like this:

public String toStringHierarchy(int tabLevel){
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    for(int i = 0; i < tabLevel; i++){
        builder.append("\t");
    }
    builder.append("-" + name);
    builder.append("\n");
    for(Item nextChild : children){
        builder.append(nextChild.toStringHierarchy(tabLevel + 1));
    }
    return builder.toString();
}

Which gives me this:

-electronics
    -Television
        -21inch
            -Test
        -23inch
        -LCD display
    -player
        -mp3player
        -vcd player
            -hd quality
        -dvd player