Question

I have a Table for categories , which stores Hierarchical Data in the following format

NodeID—>ParentID—>NodeName

I want to select categories in the following manner for which i need to return a JSON Object in a predefined format.

JSON FORMAT

"Option 1": {"Suboption":200},
"Option 2": {"Suboption 2": {"Subsub 1":201, "Subsub 2":202},
             "Suboption 3": {"Subsub 3":203, "Subsub 4":204, "Subsub 5":205}
            }

How do i return JSON in this format from a hierarchical database?? I mean how do i approach?? Kindly show me a direction.

NOTE:

Click Here to Checkout the (jQuery) Plugin I am using

Answer 1

Provided you are in ASP.Net you can just iterate though it using the build in functions:

System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer oSerializer = 
         new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
string sJSON = oSerializer.Serialize(oList);

You can perform iterations using loops as well:

var productsJObject = JObject.Parse(result.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result);

foreach (var category in categories)
{
    foreach (var category2 in category.Value)
    {
        foreach (var category3 in category2.Value)
        {
            var olist = new MyList { Id = version.SelectToken("id").ToString()
                      };
        }
    }
}

This can be ugly but usable if you have a defined set of levels, if you are performing an Nth dimensional transition it gets very complex very fast.

You can look here for an idea:

Java – Create JSON Object from Multiple Multidimensional Arrays