gryphon has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
Greetings fellow monks,
After looking over a recent project, I noticed I had written similar code in several sections that effectively did the same thing: Grab data from a database (single query) and build a tree structure from that data. Each time, I was building a structure according to similar rules, so I decided to make a common function.
What I've come up with works, but it has some repeated code. But what concerns me the most is that it's more or less a foreach loop that pushes to an array... which makes me want to rewrite it as a map. Anyway, I've been looking at this for a while and am stuck. I'd like some pointers as to how I could improve the function.
sub tree_data { my ( $old_data, $key_name, $next_group, @remaining_keys ) = @_; my ( @new_data, $last_key, $build_box ); foreach ( @{ $old_data } ) { if ( $last_key and ( $last_key ne $_->{ $key_name } ) ) { push @new_data, { $key_name => $last_key, $next_group => ( @remaining_keys ) ? tree_data( $build_box, @remaining_keys ) : $build_box, }; undef $build_box; } $last_key = delete $_->{ $key_name }; push @{ $build_box }, $_; } push @new_data, { $key_name => $last_key, $next_group => ( @remaining_keys ) ? tree_data( $build_box, @remaining_keys ) : $build_box, }; return \@new_data; }
What I'm trying to accomplish here is take data from a database call and build a tree from it based on key names. Here's some sample input:
my $input = [ { 'team' => 'A-Team', 'employee' => 'Face', 'work_day' => '2006-08-28', 'other_data' => '123456789', }, { 'team' => 'A-Team', 'employee' => 'Murdock', 'work_day' => '2006-08-28', 'other_data' => '123456789', }, { 'team' => 'Military', 'employee' => 'Decker', 'work_day' => '2006-08-28', 'other_data' => '123456789', }, ];
Here's some sample output:
my $output = [ { 'team' => 'A-Team', 'employees' => [ { 'employee' => 'Face', 'work_day' => '2006-08-28', 'other_data' => '123456789', }, { 'employee' => 'Murdock', 'work_day' => '2006-08-28', 'other_data' => '123456789', }, ], }, { 'team' => 'Military', 'employees' => [ { 'employee' => 'Decker', 'work_day' => '2006-08-28', 'other_data' => '123456789', }, ], }, ];
To call the function, I just pass in the data and the key name and sub-group name pairs I want, like this:
# ...to generate the output example from above... my $output = tree_data( $input, 'team', 'employees' ); # ...to go a little deeper... my $output = tree_data( $input, 'team', 'employees', 'employee', 'work_days' );
Going forward, I'm probably going to want to add the ability to pull multiple keys into a particular level, not just a single key; but that's really out of scope for what I'm trying to accomplish right now.
What sort of things should I do to make this function better? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
gryphon
Whitepages.com Development Manager (WDDC)
code('Perl') || die;
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Replies are listed 'Best First'. | |
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Re: Build tree data structure from DB (flat) data; function golf
by halley (Prior) on Aug 30, 2006 at 19:56 UTC | |
Re: Build tree data structure from DB (flat) data; function golf
by stvn (Monsignor) on Aug 30, 2006 at 19:25 UTC | |
by gryphon (Abbot) on Aug 30, 2006 at 19:59 UTC | |
Re: Build tree data structure from DB (flat) data; function golf
by NamfFohyr (Scribe) on Aug 30, 2006 at 17:50 UTC | |
Re: Build tree data structure from DB (flat) data; function golf
by jdporter (Paladin) on Aug 31, 2006 at 19:07 UTC | |
by perlfan (Vicar) on Sep 01, 2006 at 02:30 UTC | |
by imp (Priest) on Sep 02, 2006 at 04:41 UTC | |
Re: Build tree data structure from DB (flat) data; function golf
by imp (Priest) on Sep 02, 2006 at 05:33 UTC |