Create a JSON tree view in PHP using delimiter - php

Question

I am trying to create a file explorer type treeview JSON to be read by FancyTree for a project I'm attempting.
The files are stored in a database, with an ID, name, URL, Type and code fields. The mock database looks like this:
ID name URL. Type code
1 test dir.dir1 txt sometext
2 next dir.dir1 txt somemoretext
3 main dir txt evenmoretext
I need to build the JSON tree view from this data, using the URL as a path (period being the delimiter) and the files being inside the final directory so the tree looks like
/dir/dir1/test.txt
/dir/dir1/next.txt
/dir/main.txt
FancyTree JSON output should look like
[
{
"title": "dir",
"folder": true,
"children": [
{
"title": "dir1",
"folder": true,
"children": [
{
"title": "test.txt",
"key": 1
}, {
"title": "next.txt",
"key": 2
}
]
}, {
"title": "main.txt",
"key": 3
}
]
}
]
Currently, I'm getting the data from the database into $scriptArray
SELECT 'name','url','type','id' FROM.....
I'm then sorting and building a tree with
$url = array_column($scriptArray, 'url');
array_multisort($url, SORT_ASC, $scriptArray);
$result = [];
foreach($scriptArray as $item) {
$loop = 0;
$keys = array_reverse(explode('.', $item->url));
$tmp = $item->name;
$tmp2 = $item->type;
foreach ($keys as $keyid => $key) {
if($loop == 0) {
$tmp = ["title" => $tmp.".".$tmp2, 'key' => $item->id];
} else {
$tmp = ["title" => $keys[$keyid - 1], "folder" => true, "children" => [$tmp]];
}
$loop++;
}
$tmp = ["title" => $keys[count($keys)-1], "folder" => true, "children" => [$tmp]];
$result[] = $tmp;
}
However, the output I'm getting is.
[
{
"title": "dir",
"folder": true,
"children": [
{
"title": "dir2",
"folder": true,
"children": [
{
"title": "test.txt",
"key": 1
}
]
}
]
},
{
"title": "dir",
"folder": true,
"children": [
{
"title": "dir2",
"folder": true,
"children": [
{
"title": "next.txt",
"key": 2
}
]
}
]
},
{
"title": "main.txt",
"key": 3
}
]
I have tried applying an array_merge, array_merge_recursive and various others without success. Can anyone help with this?

Answer 1

Working with loop won't work unless you know per advance the maximum depth of your folder hierarchy.
A better solution is to build the folder path "recursively", and append the file to the final folder.
This can be achieved with by creating a reference with the & operator, and navigate to its children until the whole path is build :
$result = array();
foreach($files as $file)
{
// build the directory path if needed
$directories = explode('.', $file->url); // get hierarchy of directories
$currentRoot = &$result ; // set the pointer to the root directory per default
foreach($directories as $directory)
{
// check if directory already exists in the hierarchy
$dir = null ;
foreach($currentRoot as $i => $d)
{
if(isset($d['folder']) && $d['folder'] and $d['title'] == $directory)
{
$dir = &$currentRoot[$i] ;
break ;
}
}
// create directory if missing
if(is_null($dir))
{
$item = array(
'title' => $directory,
'folder' => true,
'children' => array()
);
$currentRoot[] = $item ;
$dir = &$currentRoot[count($currentRoot)-1];
}
// move to the next level
$currentRoot = &$dir['children'] ;
unset($dir);
}
// finally append the file in the latest directory
$currentRoot[] = array(
'title' => $file->name . '.' . $file->type,
'key' => $file->id,
);
unset($currentRoot);
}
echo json_encode($result);