Larger Structures

Nodes can be used to create larger data structures such as linked lists, graphs and trees. You can traverse these structures by going form one node to another by looking at the nodes they point to.

Making Your Own

Node Class

A fairly simple implementation for a structure like a linked list might look like the following:

class Node:
	def __init__(self, data, next_node=None):
		self.data = data
		self.next_node = next_node
	
	def set_next_node(self, next_node):
		self.next_node = next_node
	
	def get_next_node(self):
		return self.next_node
	
	def get_data(self):
		return self.data

This implementation allows you to have a node that only points to the next node in the linked list.

Linking Nodes

This can be done by creating an instance of the node and assigning data to the node.

node1 = Node(1)
node2 = Node(2)
node3 = Node(3)

Then we need to link node1 to node2 and node2 to node3.

node1.set_next_node(node2)
node2.set_next_node(node3)

Traversing the Linked List

To traverse the linked list and print the values, you can start at node1 and follow the next_node references:

current_node = node1

while current_node:
    print(current_node.get_value())
    current_node = current_node.get_next_node()

1
2
3

There are more in-depth implementations shown in each data structure.