tabtree

Simple utility to convert tabbed trees into JSON trees. Tabbed trees are a great way to create and maintain tree data, but JSON trees are needed for some software, such as many d3.js visualisations.

I published this repo because I was sick of writing it from scratch. It's only a small amount of code, but deceptively fiddly to get working.

Usage

Your input file should be in a format like this:

Parent 1
	Child 1.1
		Grandchild 1.1.1
		Grandchild 1.1.2
	Child 1.2
Parent 2
	Child 2.1
	Child 2.2

The indents must be tab characters, and a child must have one more tab than its parent. Blank lines are ignored.

$ node toJSON < tabbedTree.txt

Resulting in:

[
  {
    "name": "Parent 1",
    "children": [
      {
        "name": "Child 1.1",
        "children": [
          {
            "name": "Grandchild 1.1.1"
          },
          {
            "name": "Grandchild 1.1.2"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "name": "Child 1.2"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "name": "Parent 2",
    "children": [
      {
        "name": "Child 2.1"
      },
      {
        "name": "Child 2.2"
      }
    ]
  }
]