Question

I have a flat CSV file which I need read from to end up with 3 select boxes for region, country, city.

I’m using jQuery to load the csv file, and jQuery Csv plugin to return the csv file as an array.

I have looped through the array and built an array of the countries, but am now struggling to add the cities to the array. What structure would be best? Ideally I just want to loop over the csv once, and end up with one nested array, which has regions, then countries ten cities.

Is this a case for an associative array?

Thanks for any help.

Ian.

Answer 1

Yes, associative arrays are fine for that, something like this:

var data = [
    ['europe', 'belgium', 'brussels'],
    ['europe', 'france', 'paris'],
    ['europe', 'france', 'lyon'],
    ['americas', 'usa', 'washington'],
    ['americas', 'usa', 'new-york'],
    ['americas', 'chile', 'santiago']
];

var tree = {},
    l = data.length,
    region, country;
while(l--){
    region = data[l][0];
    country = data[l][1];
    tree[region] = tree[region] || {};
    tree[region][country] = tree[region][country] || [];
    tree[region][country].push( data[l][2] );
}
console.log(tree);