How to Create a JSON Tree from a Tabulated Hierarchy in Python

Question

I'm sure there's an elegant way of doing this in Python (or at a push, Javascript), but for the life of me I can't see it...

I have a CSV file of the form:

ID, Name, Description
A, A-name,
A100, A100-name, A100-desc
A110, A110-name, A110-desc
A111, A111-name, A111-desc
A112, A112-name, A112-desc
A113, A113-name, A113-desc
A120, A120-name, A120-desc
A131, A131-name, A131-desc
A200, A200-name, A200-desc
B, B-name,
B100, B100-name, B100-desc
B130, B130-name, B130-desc
B131, B131-name, B131-desc
B140, B140-name, B140-desc

and I want to generate a hierarchical JSON structure so I can visualise the data in theJIT.

var json = {  
  "id": "aUniqueIdentifier",  
  "name": "usually a nodes name",  
  "data": {  
    "some key": "some value",  
    "some other key": "some other value"  
   },  
  "children": [ *other nodes or empty* ]  
}; 

My plan was to map ID to id, Name to name, Description to data.desc, and organise the hierarchy so that:

• Root is parent of A and B
• A is parent of A100 and A200
• A100 is parent of A110 and A120
• A110 is parent of A111, A112 and A113
• B is parent of B100
• B100 is parent of B130 and B140
• B130 is parent of B131

There is also a pathological case in the otherwise regular ordering by ID, where A100 is parent of A131 (the expected A130 is not present).

I was hoping to find an elegant Python solution to this, but it's defeating me at the moment, even ignoring the pathological case...