Build tree type list by recursively checking parent-child relationship C#

Question

I have One class that has a list of itself so it can be represented in a tree structure.

I am pulling a flat list of these classes and want to unflatten it.

Answer 1

I tried solutions suggested and figured out that they give us about O(n^2) complexity.

In my case (I have about 50k items to be built into tree) it was completely unacceptable.

I came to the following solution (assuming that each item has only one parent and all parents exist in the list) with complexity O(n*log(n)) [n times getById, getById has O(log(n)) complexity]:

static List BuildTreeAndReturnRootNodes(List flatItems)
{
    var byIdLookup = flatItems.ToLookup(i => i.Id);
    foreach (var item in flatItems)
    {
        if (item.ParentId != null)
        {
            var parent = byIdLookup[item.ParentId.Value].First();
            parent.Children.Add(item);
        }
    }
    return flatItems.Where(i => i.ParentId == null).ToList();
}

Full code snippet:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var flatItems = new List()
        {
            new Item(1),
            new Item(2),
            new Item(3, 1),
            new Item(4, 2),
            new Item(5, 4),
            new Item(6, 3),
            new Item(7, 5),
            new Item(8, 2),
            new Item(9, 3),
            new Item(10, 9),
        };
        var treeNodes = BuildTreeAndReturnRootNodes(flatItems);
        foreach (var n in treeNodes)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(n.Id + " number of children: " + n.Children.Count);
        }
    }
    // Here is the method
    static List BuildTreeAndReturnRootNodes(List flatItems)
    {
        var byIdLookup = flatItems.ToLookup(i => i.Id);
        foreach (var item in flatItems)
        {
            if (item.ParentId != null)
            {
                var parent = byIdLookup[item.ParentId.Value].First();
                parent.Children.Add(item);
            }
        }
        return flatItems.Where(i => i.ParentId == null).ToList();
    }
    class Item
    {
        public readonly int Id;
        public readonly int? ParentId;

        public Item(int id, int? parent = null)
        {
            Id = id;
            ParentId = parent;
        }
        public readonly List Children = new List();
    }
}