Preserving hierarchy when converting .csv file to xml or json
- by Simon Levinson
Hello
I have a question concerning translating data from a CSV into XML or JSON where it is essential to preserve the heirarchy of the data.
For example, if I have CSV data like this:
type,brand,country,quantity
apple,golden_delicious,english,1
apple,golden_delicious,french,2
apple,cox,,4
apple,braeburn,,1
banana,,carribean,6
banana,,central_america,7
clememtine,,,3
What I want is to preserve hierarchy in the XML so that I get something like:
<fruit>
<type = "apple">
<brand = "golden_delicious">
<country = "english" quantity = "1">
<country = "french" quantity = "2">
</brand>
<brand = "cox">
<quantity = "4">
</brand>
<brand = "braeburn">
<quantity = "1">
</brand>
</type>
<type = "banana">
<country = "carribean" quantity = "6">
<country = "central_america" quantity = "7">
</type>
<type = "clementine">
<quantity = "3">
</type>
<fruit />
Is it best to try to use JAXP or to convert the above into a table simply of parent, child and then writing the data to an array of strings for processing,? Like this:
parent,child
fruit,apple
apple,golden_delicious
golden_delicious,english
golden_delicious,french
english,1
french,2
apple,cox
cox,4
apple,braeburn
braeburn,1
And so on.
Or is there a better way?
Thanks
Simon Levinson
