Question

The recursion part is quite illusive.
for a given HTML structure, of unknown depth, I need to convert to JSON.
(I use this from some YAML internationalization translation system I am building)

my general idea is to go deep until it finds the INPUT, then create an
object with the key/value of the span.innerHTML/input. Value, and return that
object, so it will be the VALUE of a KEY that is the last <span class="title"> reached.

JSBIN playground – live code example

I can’t get my recursive function to output the JSON I want…

HTML structure

<ul>
    <li>
        <span class="title">footer</span>
        <ul>
            <li>
                <span>statement</span>
                <input type="text" value="xxx">
            </li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li>
        <span class="title">landing</span>
        <ul>
            <li>
                <span>page_title</span>
                <input type="text" value="yyy">
            </li>
            <li>
                <span>page_sub_title</span>
                <input type="text" value="xxx">
            </li>
            <li>
                <span class="title">pricing</span>
            <ul class="level11">
                <li>
                    <span>title</span>
                    <input type="text" value="aaa">
                </li>
                <li>
                    <span>cost</span>
                    <input type="text" value="xxx">
                </li>
            </ul>
            </li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

Wanted JSON output

{
    footer : {
        statement : 'xxx'
    },
    landing : {
        page_title : 'yyy',
        page_sub_title : 'xxx',
        pricing : {
            title : 'aaa',
            cost : 'xxx'
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

If you can convince yourself to using jQuery, try this:

function helper(root) {
  var result = {};

  $('> ul > li > span', root).each(function () {
    result[$(this).text()] = $(this).hasClass('title') ? helper($(this).parent()) : $(this).next('input').val();
  });

  return result;
}

console.log(helper('body'));