Question

To generate a Table of Content, I have these data available in a Python list:

data = [
    {title: 'Section 1', level: 1, page_number: 1},
    {title: 'Section 1.1', level: 2, page_number: 2},
    {title: 'Section 1.2', level: 2, page_number: 3},
    {title: 'Section 2', level: 1, page_number: 4},
    {title: 'Section 2.1', level: 2, page_number: 5},
    {title: 'Section 3', level: 1, page_number: 6},
]

From this, I’d like to obtain this kind of nested structure, much more compatible with the use of a template engine:

toc = [
    {title: 'Section 1', page_number: 1, sub: [
        {title: 'Section 1.1', page_number: 2, sub: []},
        {title: 'Section 1.2', page_number: 3, sub: []},
    ]},
    {title: 'Section 2', page_number: 4, sub: [
        {title: 'Section 2.1', page_number: 5, sub: []},    
    ]},
    {title: 'Section 3', page_number: 6, sub: []},
]

Hints on how to achieve this? I tried with a recursive function but it’s getting much tricky for my limited brain.

Any help much appreciated.

EDIT: Added fact that a section entry can have eventually no child. Sorry for the miss.

Answer 1

Assuming chapters come in order, meaning child chapter is always after the parent, and there are no missing parent (skipped levels):

import pprint

data = [
    {'title': 'Section 1', 'level': 1, 'page_number': 1},
    {'title': 'Section 1.1', 'level': 2, 'page_number': 2},
    {'title': 'Section 1.2', 'level': 2, 'page_number': 3},
    {'title': 'Section 2', 'level': 1, 'page_number': 4},
    {'title': 'Section 2.1', 'level': 2, 'page_number': 42},
    {'title': 'Section 2.1.1', 'level': 3, 'page_number': 42},
    {'title': 'Section 3', 'level': 1, 'page_number': 42},
]

toc = []
stack = [toc]
for d in data:
    d['sub'] = []   
    while d['level'] < len(stack):
        stack.pop()
    while d['level']  > len(stack):
        stack.append(stack[-1][-1]['sub'])
    stack[-1].append(d)


pprint.pprint(toc)

Result:

[{'level': 1,
  'page_number': 1,
  'sub': [{'level': 2, 'page_number': 2, 'sub': [], 'title': 'Section 1.1'},
          {'level': 2, 'page_number': 3, 'sub': [], 'title': 'Section 1.2'}],
  'title': 'Section 1'},
 {'level': 1,
  'page_number': 4,
  'sub': [{'level': 2,
           'page_number': 42,
           'sub': [{'level': 3,
                    'page_number': 42,
                    'sub': [],
                    'title': 'Section 2.1.1'}],
           'title': 'Section 2.1'}],
  'title': 'Section 2'},
 {'level': 1, 'page_number': 42, 'sub': [], 'title': 'Section 3'}]

EDIT: changed it to have empty ‘sub’ items where there are no children. See the other variant in edit history.