Need assistance with recursion in JS - recursion

Question

I'm having a great deal of trouble wrapping my head around recursion. Simple recursion I can do but this is one is not easy for me. My goal here is to speed up this search algorithm. I'm guessing recursion will help. It takes 15 seconds on a simple 43 node tree with children as it is. Below is my unrolled recursion fomr of the code that works.
var nodeList = new Array();
var removeList = new Array();
var count = 0;
var foundInThisNodeTree;
var find = function ( condition )
{
}
while ( this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count ).data() )
{
var foundInThisNodeTree = false;
var n;
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeFromElement", this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count ) )
if ( n.data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; }
else {//look deeper
var i = 0;
while ( this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count + "_" + i ).data() )
{
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeFromElement", this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count + "_" + i ) );
if ( n.data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
else {//look deeper
var j = 0;
while ( this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count + "_" + i + "_" + j ).data() )
{
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeFromElement", this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count + "_" + i + "_" + j ) );
if ( n.data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
else {//look deeper
var k = 0;
while ( this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count + "_" + i + "_" + j + "_" + k ).data() )
{
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeFromElement", this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count + "_" + i + "_" + j + "_" + k ) );
if ( n.data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
k++;
}
}
j++;
}
}
i++;
}
}
if ( !foundInThisNodeTree ) this.treeIDMap.igTree("removeAt", ""+count )
else count++;
}
*** second revision suggested by Mirco Ellmann *****
var nodeList = new Array();
var removeList = new Array();
var count = 0;
var foundInThisNodeTree;
filter = filter.toLowerCase();
while ( this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count ).data() )
{
var foundInThisNodeTree = false;
var n;
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeFromElement", this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count ) )
if ( n.data.ITEM.toLowerCase().indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; }
else {//look deeper
var i = 0;
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "childrenByPath", count );
while ( n[i] )
{
if ( n[i].data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
var j = 0;
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "childrenByPath", count + "_" + i );
while ( n[j] )
{
if ( n[j].data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
var k = 0;
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "childrenByPath", count + "_" + i + "_" + j);
while ( n[k] )
{
if ( n[k].data.ITEM.indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
k++;
}
j++;
}
i++;
}
}
if ( !foundInThisNodeTree ) this.treeIDMap.igTree("removeAt", ""+count )
else count++;
}
****using my branchable trees to get the data no need for any calls to tree****
var count = 0;
var foundInThisNodeTree;
filter = filter.toLowerCase();
while ( this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count ).data() )
{
var foundInThisNodeTree = false;
var n;
n = this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeFromElement", this.treeIDMap.igTree( "nodeByPath", count ) )
if ( n.data.ITEM.toLowerCase().indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; }
if ( n.data.branch )//look at all childer under the root node
{
var i = 0;
n = n.data.branch;
while ( n[i] )//look at all childer under the root node
{
if ( n[i].ITEM.toLowerCase().indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
while ( n[i].branch )//look deeper
{
var j = 0;
n = n[i].branch;
if ( n[j].ITEM.toLowerCase().indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
while ( n[j].branch )//look deeper
{
var k = 0;
n = n[j].branch;
if ( n[k].ITEM.toLowerCase().indexOf( filter ) > -1 ) { foundInThisNodeTree = true; break; }
k++;
}
j++;
}
i++;
}
}
if ( !foundInThisNodeTree ) this.treeIDMap.igTree("removeAt", ""+count )
else count++;
}

Answer 1

instead of always use "nodeByPath" you should use "childrenByPath".
that would minimize the search calls on the igTree.
PS: USE not REPLACE ;)

Answer 2

You're not really doing this recursively. You're rather repeating your code for each level in the hierarchy. What you want is a helper function which takes the current node-path as a parameter and recursively calls the same method for each of its children with their id added to the path of the current node. Recursively means the code should work for any depth of tree. To me it looks like your code will only work for a set depth.
For the speed issue, there might be two issues. I didn't really read your code too closely, so I leave it to you to figure out which one is more likely.
You might be revisiting nodes. If so, obviously that would impact performance.
The framework you're using might be slow with looking up the nodes. One solution could be to find alternate methods to call on the framework which is meant for what you're doing. For instance the framework might have a hierarchical representation internally, but has to rebuild it or parse it when you pass in your full paths. Look for methods taking a source and relative path instead. If that's not the problem the framework might just be slow, and you might be better of to read all the nodes and build your own in-memory tree to use instead.

Answer 3

ok, I found a way to use the data provider and use a normal Json search. Still if anyone can speed this up I'd be grateful. I just when from 15 seconds to 1. This one has the recursion I need.
findInObject = function( obj, prop, val )
{
if ( obj !== null && obj.hasOwnProperty( prop ) && obj[prop].toLowerCase().indexOf(val) > -1 )
{
return obj;
} else
{
for ( var s in obj )
{
if ( obj.hasOwnProperty( s ) && typeof obj[s] == 'object' && obj[s] !== null )
{
var result = findInObject( obj[s], prop, val );
if ( result !== null )
{
return result;
}
}
}
}
return null;
}
for ( var i = 0; i < this.treeData.length; i++)
{
if ( findInObject( this.treeData[i], "ITEM", filter ) ) foundNodes.push( this.treeData[i] )//does the node have a match?
}
this.treeIDMap.igTree( { dataSource: foundNodes } );
this.treeIDMap.igTree( "dataBind" );
};