Flatten Nested Arrays or Objects | Dataford Interview Questions

Walmart Global Tech frontend services often transform nested catalog and fulfillment data before rendering it. Implement flatten_data to convert a nested JSON-like object or array into a single dictionary whose keys represent each value's path.

Formal Specification

The input is a non-empty JSON-like dictionary or list. Dictionary keys contain no periods. Values may be dictionaries, lists, strings, numbers, booleans, or None.

Use dot notation for dictionary keys and zero-based numeric components for list indices. Each scalar value becomes an entry in the output dictionary. Preserve empty dictionaries and lists as values at their own path. For a root scalar, the path is the empty string, although root scalars are excluded by the constraints.

For example, {"item": {"sku": "A1"}} becomes {"item.sku": "A1"}, while {"items": [{"id": 7}]} becomes {"items.0.id": 7}.

Constraints

1 <= total number of containers and scalar values <= 10^4
Maximum nesting depth is 1000
Dictionary keys are non-empty strings containing no periods
Input contains only JSON-compatible values
The root input is a dictionary or list

Function Signature

def flatten_data(data):

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