Question

I’ve made my own tree data structure via classes.
Now I’m stuck with really basic stuffs. I need to make output tab delimited file from data in my List <MainTreeNode>.
I think that recursion is only way?!

Tree is N-tree, and output have first row as header and other rows are values.

Tree:

1. MSG (MainTreeNode)
   • MainParam (Must have prop NAME, doesn’t have to have prop VALUE)
     • SubParam1 (Must have prop NAME, must have prop VALUE)
     • SubParam2 (Must have prop NAME, doesn’t have to have prop VALUE)
       • SubSubParam2.1 (Must have prop NAME, must have prop VALUE)
         etc.

Or:

1. Message : Name
   • Param1 : ValueV1 (VALUE must, because it doesn’t have children)
   • Param2
     • Param2.1 : ValueV2
     • Param2.2 : Value
       • Param2.2.1 : ValueV3
       • Param2.2.2 : ValueV4 …etc.

And output have to be like this (first line is header):

Param1|Param2/Param2.1|Param2/Param2.2/Param2.2.1|Param2/Param2.2/Param2.2.2  
ValueV1|ValueV2|ValueV3|ValueV4
...

So I need probably List for header and for values but I don’t know how to implement that in recursion way (or any another).

Some of unfinished code:

public void PrintToTabFile(List<Message> messages, List<string> parameters)
    {
        foreach (string s in parameters)
        {
            using (StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(@"C:\temp\" + s + ".xls"))
            { 
                streamWriter.Write("No.\tMsgName\tMsgData1\tMsgData2\tMsgData3");
                var msg = messages.Where(x => x.Parameters.Where(p => p.ParameterName == s).Count() == 1);

                List<string> headers = new List<string>();
                List<string> values= new List<string>();
                //... Stuck!!!
            }
        }
    }

    private void Recursion(Parameter parameter, List<string> headers, List<string> values)
    {
        if (parameter.SubParameters.Count == 0)
        {
            int index = headers.IndexOf(parameter.ParameterName);
            values[index] = parameter.ParameterValue;
        }
        else
        {
            foreach (Parameter p in parameter.SubParameters)
            {
                Recursion(p, headers, values);
                //and Stuck Probably here or before recursion call
            }
        }
    }

Answer 1

I won’t claim that I really know what you are asking, but still I’ll give it shot. To me this seems like a very basic recursion to traverse a tree structure with some weird output while you are doing it.
Try it like this:
1. Make an interface for all your classes called INode. This interface should contain the typical things like List Children, INode Parent etc.
2. Make all your classes implement this interface (or let them inherit a base class that does this)
3. Now start with your base clase and traverse recursively over all Children using the Children property and generate your output.

This should do the trick I guess. (Sorry, no VS here to put up some real code)

BTW: you’ll probably find a ton of posts about this on stackoverflow already.