How to find the needed item inside a nested item in an array?

Question

I have a struct like this in code, which is Identifiable and has nested items as well:

struct Item: Identifiable {
    
    let id: UUID = UUID()
    var nameOfItem: String
    var nestedItems: [Item]
    
    init(nameOfItem: String, nestedItems: [Item]) {
        self.nameOfItem = nameOfItem
        self.nestedItems = nestedItems
    }

}

var myArray: [Item] = [Item]()

My issue is after building my array, if I need to update an item I know the id of that Item but I do not know how to look for that id and find it in correct way. look this photo, I can look each item of myArray to find the item that match to my looking id, and if myArray items dose not have the item I am looking for, I have to start looking inside of nested items of each array item, which would take tons of time. Looking to find out if there is a faster way to find the needed item.

Answer 1

To ... update an item I know the id of that Item but I do not know how to look for that id and find it in correct way, use recursion, such as:

 func findItem(withID id: UUID, in items: [Item]) -> Item? {
     for item in items {
         if item.id == id {
             return item
         }
         if let foundItem = findItem(withID: id, in: item.nestedItems) {
             return foundItem
         }
     }
     return nil
 }

 

EDIT-1:

You can use the same approach (recursion) to construct a Dictionary [UUID: Item] once. Then after that, you can directly access/update the desired item id, no overhead to access.

var itemDictionary = createItemDictionary(items: myArray)
 
 itemDictionary[item2.id]?.nameOfItem = "Mickey Mouse"  // <--- here
 
 func createItemDictionary(items: [Item]) -> [UUID: Item] {
     var itemDictionary: [UUID: Item] = [:]
     for item in items {
         itemDictionary[item.id] = item
         itemDictionary.merge(createItemDictionary(items: item.nestedItems)) { (_, new) in new }
     }
     return itemDictionary
 }