Feature #2: Serialize and Deserialize Participant Data
Explore how to serialize and deserialize participant data managed with binary search trees in Kotlin. Understand the use of pre-order traversal to convert BSTs into optimized string formats and reconstruct them efficiently. This lesson helps you implement data serialization modules critical for server-client data exchanges, improving your coding interview preparation with real-world examples.
We'll cover the following...
Description
Like in the previous feature, the participant data of a Zoom session is maintained using a binary search tree. This is beneficial because the sorted order of names on the display does not change even when participants join or leave the meeting. We’ll assume that this binary search tree is maintained on both the server and client sides. However, while transmitting this information back and forth, we also want to serialize the data, send it from the server to the client, and then deserialize the data received by the client into a BST. Therefore, we need to create two modules: a serializer that deserializes the data before sending it through the network and a deserializer that translates the serialized data into its original form.
There are many ways to represent a serialized representation of a binary search tree. All that matters is that it is optimized.
Let’s look at an example of serializing a binary search tree. Suppose we are given the following tree as input:
The serializer will take the root of this BST as an input and return a string, which is the serialized form. This string can be (but is not limited to): Jeanette, Elia, Albert, Elvira, Latasha, Kandice, Maggie. Then, the deserializer will take this string as input and return the root as a BST containing all the ...