leetcode:Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree

Serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object into a sequence of bits so that it can be stored in a file or memory buffer, or transmitted across a network connection link to be reconstructed later in the same or another computer environment.

Design an algorithm to serialize and deserialize a binary tree. There is no restriction on how your serialization/deserialization algorithm should work. You just need to ensure that a binary tree can be serialized to a string and this string can be deserialized to the original tree structure.

For example, you may serialize the following tree

    1
   / \
  2   3
     / \
    4   5

as "[1,2,3,null,null,4,5]", just the same as how LeetCode OJ serializes a binary tree. You do not necessarily need to follow this format, so please be creative and come up with different approaches yourself.

Note: Do not use class member/global/static variables to store states. Your serialize and deserialize algorithms should be stateless.

# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode(object):
#     def __init__(self, x):
#         self.val = x
#         self.left = None
#         self.right = None

class Codec:

    def _serialize(self, root):
        if root == None:
            self.myList.append('x')
        else:
            self.myList.append(str(root.val))
            self._serialize(root.left)
            self._serialize(root.right)

    def _deserialize(self, dList):
        
        if dList[self.idx] == 'x':
            return None
            
        node = TreeNode(dList[self.idx])
        
        self.idx = self.idx+1
        node.left = self._deserialize(dList)
        
        self.idx = self.idx+1
        node.right = self._deserialize(dList)
        
        return node
            
    def serialize(self, root):
        """Encodes a tree to a single string.
        
        :type root: TreeNode
        :rtype: str
        """
        self.myList = []
        self._serialize(root)
        return " ".join(self.myList);

            
        return self.retString
        

    def deserialize(self, data):
        """Decodes your encoded data to tree.
        
        :type data: str
        :rtype: TreeNode
        """
        self.idx = 0;
        dList = data.split(" ")
        return self._deserialize(dList)

# Your Codec object will be instantiated and called as such:
# codec = Codec()
# codec.deserialize(codec.serialize(root))