230. Kth Smallest Element in a BST

Given a binary search tree, write a function kthSmallest to find the kth smallest element in it.

Note:
You may assume k is always valid, 1 ≤ k ≤ BST's total elements.

Example 1:

Input: root = [3,1,4,null,2], k = 1
   3
  / \
 1   4
  \
   2
Output: 1

Example 2:

Input: root = [5,3,6,2,4,null,null,1], k = 3
       5
      / \
     3   6
    / \
   2   4
  /
 1
Output: 3

Follow up:
What if the BST is modified (insert/delete operations) often and you need to find the kth smallest frequently? How would you optimize the kthSmallest routine?

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

class Solution(object):
    def kthSmallest(self, root, k):
        """
        :type root: TreeNode
        :type k: int
        :rtype: int
        """
        self.k = k
        self.res = None
        self.helper(root)
        return self.res
    def helper(self, root):
        if root is None:
            return None
        self.helper(root.left)
        self.k -= 1
        if self.k == 0:
            self.res = root.val
            return
        self.helper(root.right)