Currently, I am working on a recursive function that operates on a JSON tree structure {name, type, [children]}, with the goal of removing nodes of a specific type. However, it is essential that the children of the removed node are reattached to the parent if they do not match the type being removed.
I am encountering a challenge in my implementation. Let's consider the scenario where I want to eliminate nodes of type "b" from the following tree:
const exampleData = [{
name: "parent",
type: "a",
children: [{
name: "childA",
type: "a",
children: null
},{
name: "childB",
type: "b",
children: [{
name: "grandChildA",
type: "a",
children: null
},{
name: "grandChildB",
type: "a",
children: null
}]
},{
name: "childC",
type: "a",
children: null
}]
}]
The original set of children for the parent node includes [childA, childB, childC].
Following the removal operation, we expect the parent to have children as
[childA, grandChildA, grandChildB, childC][childA, [grandChildA, grandChildB], childC]I acknowledge the need to use the spread operator but I am uncertain about its placement within the recursion logic.
Presented below is the current version of my function (acknowledging that the usage of the spread syntax may be incorrect):
const removeType = (node, type) => {
// Handling the case where the node should not be removed
if (node.type !== type){
// If the node possesses children, call the function recursively to prune them
if (node.children && node.children.length > 0){
node.children = [...node.children.map(child => removeType(child, type))
.filter(child => child !== null)]
return node
}
// If the node has no children, simply return the node itself
else return node
}
// Handling the scenario where the node needs to be removed
else if (node.type === type){
// In cases where the node contains children, make a recursive call and then reattach the children
if (node.children && node.children.length > 0){
node.children = [...node.children.map(child => removeType(child, type))
.filter(child => child !== null)]
return node.children
}
// Otherwise, return null
else return null
}
}