java - Construct a tree structure from list of string paths

Question

I have a collection of string paths like ["x1/x2/x3","x1/x2/x4","x1/x5"] in a list. I need to construct a tree-like structure from this list which can be iterated to get a pretty printed tree. like this

     x1
    /  
   x5   x2
       /  
      x3  x4

Any ideas/suggestions? I believe that the problem can be attacked first by processing the list of strings EDIT: The correct answer chosen was an elegant implementation, other suggestions were good too.

Answer 1

Follow an implementation of naive implementation of a visitable tree:

class Tree<T> implements Visitable<T> {

    // NB: LinkedHashSet preserves insertion order
    private final Set<Tree> children = new LinkedHashSet<Tree>();
    private final T data;

    Tree(T data) {
        this.data = data;
    }

    void accept(Visitor<T> visitor) {
        visitor.visitData(this, data);

        for (Tree child : children) {
            Visitor<T> childVisitor = visitor.visitTree(child);
            child.accept(childVisitor);
        }
    }

    Tree child(T data) {
        for (Tree child: children ) {
            if (child.data.equals(data)) {
                return child;
            }
        }

        return child(new Tree(data));
    }

    Tree child(Tree<T> child) {
        children.add(child);
        return child;
    }
}

interfaces for Visitor Pattern:

interface Visitor<T> {

    Visitor<T> visitTree(Tree<T> tree);

    void visitData(Tree<T> parent, T data);
}

interface Visitable<T> {

    void accept(Visitor<T> visitor);
}

sample implementation for Visitor Pattern:

class PrintIndentedVisitor implements Visitor<String> {

    private final int indent;

    PrintIndentedVisitor(int indent) {
        this.indent = indent;
    }

    Visitor<String> visitTree(Tree<String> tree) {
        return new IndentVisitor(indent + 2);
    }

    void visitData(Tree<String> parent, String data) {
        for (int i = 0; i < indent; i++) { // TODO: naive implementation
            System.out.print(" ");
        }

        System.out.println(data);
    }
}

and finally (!!!) a simple test case:

    Tree<String> forest = new Tree<String>("forest");
    Tree<String> current = forest;

    for (String tree : Arrays.asList("x1/x2/x3", "x1/x2/x4", "x1/x5")) {
        Tree<String> root = current;

        for (String data : tree.split("/")) {
            current = current.child(data);
        }

        current = root;
    }

    forest.accept(new PrintIndentedVisitor(0));

output:

forest
  x1
    x2
      x3
      x4
    x5