428. Serialize and Deserialize N-ary Tree
// Idea: preorder recursive traversal; add number of children after root val, in order to know when to terminate. // Example: The example in description is serialized as: "1,3,3,2,5,0,6,0,2,0,4,0" class Codec { // Encodes a tree to a single string. public String serialize(Node root) { List<String> list=newLinkedList<>(); serializeHelper(root,list); return String.join(",",list); } private void serializeHelper(Node root, List<String> list){ if(root==null){ return; }else{ list.add(String.valueOf(root.val)); list.add(String.valueOf(root.children.size()));for(Node child:root.children){ serializeHelper(child,list); } } } // Decodes your encoded data to tree. public Node deserialize(String data) { if(data.isEmpty()) return null; String[] ss=data.split(","); Queue<String> q=new LinkedList<>(Arrays.asList(ss)); return deserializeHelper(q); } private Node deserializeHelper(Queue<String> q){ Node root=new Node(); root.val=Integer.parseInt(q.poll()); int size=Integer.parseInt(q.poll()); root.children=new ArrayList<Node>(size); for(int i=0;i<size;i++){ root.children.add(deserializeHelper(q)); } return root; } }
Serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object into a sequence of bits so that it can be stored in a file or memory buffer, or transmitted across a network connection link to be reconstructed later in the same or another computer environment.
Design an algorithm to serialize and deserialize an N-ary tree. An N-ary tree is a rooted tree in which each node has no more than N children. There is no restriction on how your serialization/deserialization algorithm should work. You just need to ensure that an N-ary tree can be serialized to a string and this string can be deserialized to the original tree structure.
For example, you may serialize the following 3-ary
tree
as [1 [3[5 6] 2 4]]
. You do not necessarily need to follow this format, so please be creative and come up with different approaches yourself.
Note:
N
is in the range of[1, 1000]
- Do not use class member/global/static variables to store states. Your serialize and deserialize algorithms should be stateless.