Convert csv tree structure to json - json

Question

I have a large excel document (2000+ lines) that uses the cells to specify a tree structure and I would like to parse that into a .json file. The excel-exported .csv document is formatted as follows, where in the excel file a comma would be an empty cell:
Layer1category1,,,,,
,Layer2category,,,,
...
,,,,Layer5category1,
,,,,,item1
,,,,,item2
,,,,Layer5category2,
,,,,,item1
,,,Layer4category2,,
...
Layer1category2,,,,,
...
Layer1category8,,,,, // this is the last category in the uppermost layer
In summary, Layer n categories are prefaced with n-1 commas and followed by 6-n commas, and rows prefaced with 5 commas are the final layer, which is in the format of a string and has many fields other than its name.
I would like this to be converted to a .json file similar to the following. I use "name" because aside from a name each field is also tied to a lot of statistics that also needs to go into the json file.
{"name" : "Layer1category1",
"children": [
{"name" : "Layer2category1",
"children" : [
{"name" : "Layer3category1"
"children" : [
...
{"name" : "Layer5category1",
"children" : [{"name" : "item1"}, {"name" : "item2"}],}
{"name" : "Layer5category2",
"children" : [{"name" : "item1"}],}
{"name" : "Layer4category2",
"children" : [
...
]}
"name" : "Layer1category2",
"children" : [ ... ]
}
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can approach this? The csv to json converters I have found do not support multi-layered structures. Thanks!

Answer 1

I faced with the same issue and wrote simple php script:
Input
Level I,Level II,Level III,Level IV,Level V,Level VI,Level VII,Level VIII,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Role Profile,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,Development,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,Security,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,Cloud,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,Cloud technologies,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,IaaS,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,Amazon Web Service (AWS),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,Microsoft Azure,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,Google Compute Engine (GCE),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,OpenStack,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Output
{
"Role Profile":{
"Development":{
"Security":{},
"Cloud":{
"Cloud technologies":{
"IaaS":{
"Amazon Web Service (AWS)":{},
"Microsoft Azure":{},
"Google Compute Engine (GCE)":{},
"OpenStack":{}
}
}
}
}
}
}
Code
<?php
$fn = "skills.csv"; // input file name
$hasHeader = true; // input file has header, we will skip first line
//
function appendItem( &$r, $lvl, $item ) {
if ( $lvl ) {
$lvl--;
end( $r );
appendItem( $r[key($r)], $lvl, $item );
} else {
$r[$item] = array();
}
}
$r = array();
if ( ( $handle = fopen( $fn, "r" ) ) !== FALSE ) {
$header = true;
while ( ( $data = fgetcsv( $handle, 1000, "," ) ) !== FALSE ) {
if ( $header and $hasHeader ) {
$header = false;
} else {
$lvl = 0;
foreach( $data as $dv ) {
$v = trim( $dv );
if ( $v ) {
appendItem( $r, $lvl, $v );
break;
}
$lvl++;
}
}
}
}
echo json_encode( $r );
?>