ICNode

ICNode is designed to represent an ordered n-ary generic tree data structure written in objective-c where the main idea is to have hierarchical data structure with easy array-like access. ICNode possesses

• The ability to be manupulated easily like a tree
• The ability to be presented like an array so that developer can use it as a backend data source for a TableView very easily

Specifications

• Each node holds references to its parent, children and data
• An ICNode, which is a node, but can also be considered as a subtree because each node knows its children
• To mimic array-like functionality, all the traversal operation in ICNode is using DFS pre-order traversal
• ICNode should have operations like adding child, moving child, deleting child to be performed like a tree by manipulating the sub-nodes around.
• ICNode should have operations like querying, finding, sorting to be performed like an array

Illustration of ICNode

Some diagrams here

• Tree view: root / |
  1 4 8 / \ / |
  2 3 5 6 7 / / 9 10 / 11

• List view: root |-- 1 | |-- 2 | | -- 9 | -- 3 |-- 4 | |-- 5 | | -- 10 | | -- 11 | |-- 6 | -- 7 -- 8

• Array view:

root 1 2 9 3 4 5 10 11 6 7 8

Advantages

• Because each ICNode can be treated like a sub-tree, it is easy to move nodes around, delete nodes and all its children and etc.
• In addition to being an array, being a tree represents the hierarchical concept of the data.
• Same time complexity for traversing the tree as searching an array

Disadvantages

• Since each ICNode(or we can say an array element) holds reference to its parent and children, space complexity increases.