treeify

What is treeify?

The treeify npm package is used to convert a flat, nested object into a visual tree structure. This can be useful for displaying hierarchical data in a more readable format, such as in command-line tools or debugging outputs.

What are treeify's main functionalities?

Convert object to tree

This feature allows you to convert a nested object into a string that visually represents a tree structure. The 'asTree' method takes the object and a boolean indicating whether to show empty values.

const treeify = require('treeify');
let tree = treeify.asTree({hello: 'world', foo: {bar: 'baz'}}, true);
console.log(tree);

Custom sorting of tree branches

This feature allows you to provide a custom sorting function for the keys of your object, which will affect the order in which branches are displayed in the tree.

const treeify = require('treeify');
let tree = treeify.asTree({foo: {bar: 'baz'}, hello: 'world'}, true, (a, b) => a.localeCompare(b));
console.log(tree);

Other packages similar to treeify

archy

Archy is an npm package that also allows you to render nested hierarchies with a tree structure. It is similar to treeify but has a different API and focuses on creating ASCII trees, which can be useful for command-line utilities.

ascii-tree

Ascii-tree is another npm package that generates ASCII trees from a flat string with indentation to represent the hierarchy. It differs from treeify in that it starts with a string representation of the tree rather than an object.

README

treeify

treeify converts a JS object into a nice, visible depth-indented tree for console printing. The structure generated is similar to what you get by running the tree command on Unixy platforms.

{
    oranges: {
        'mandarin': {                                          ├─ oranges
            clementine: null,                                  │  └─ mandarin
            tangerine: 'so cheap and juicy!'        -=>        │     ├─ clementine
        }                                                      │     └─ tangerine: so cheap and juicy!
    },                                                         └─ apples
    apples: {                                                     ├─ gala
        'gala': null,                                             └─ pink lady
        'pink lady': null
    }
}

It also works well with larger nested hierarchies such as file system directory trees. In fact, the fs_tree example does a pretty good job of imitating tree. Try it out!

See the other included examples or the test suite for usage scenarios.

Getting it

For use with node.js

First you'll want to run this command in your project's root folder:

$ npm install treeify

Then proceed to use it in your project:

var treeify = require('treeify');
console.log(
   treeify.asTree({
      apples: 'gala',      //  ├─ apples: gala
      oranges: 'mandarin'  //  └─ oranges: mandarin
   }, true)
);

For use in a browser

Treeify cooperates with Node, AMD or browser globals to create a module. This means it'll work in a browser regardless of whether you have an AMD-compliant module loader or not. If such a loader isn't found when the script is executed, you may access Treeify at window.treeify.

Usage

The methods exposed to you are as follows, in a strange kind of signature notation:

asLines()

treeify.asLines(obj, showValues (boolean), [hideFunctions (boolean),] lineCallback (function))
// NOTE: hideFunctions is optional and may be safely omitted - this was done to ensure we don't break uses of the previous form

asTree()

treeify.asTree(obj, showValues (boolean), hideFunctions (boolean)): String

Running the tests

There's a pretty extensive suite of Vows tests included.

$ npm test