Dijkstra's Algorithm is a method used to find the shortest path between two points in a graph. It's like finding the fastest route from your house to the park!
1.Setup: Imagine our graph as a map with different locations (vertices) connected by roads (edges). Each road has a number on it, telling us how long it is (the weight).
2.Starting Point: We pick a place to start, like your house on the map. This is our starting vertex.
3.Exploring: We look at all the roads coming out of our starting point. We write down how long each road is. This helps us know how far each place is from our starting point.
4.Choosing the Shortest Road: We pick the shortest road and go to that place. We update our list, keeping track of how far each place is from our starting point.
5.Repeat: We keep doing this, always choosing the shortest road until we've visited all places on the map.
6.End: Once we've visited all places, we have a list that shows the shortest distance from our starting point to every other place.
Imagine we have a map with four places: A, B, C, and D. Here's how it looks:
const graph = {
'A': { 'B': 4, 'C': 2 },
'B': { 'A': 4, 'C': 5, 'D': 10 },
'C': { 'A': 2, 'B': 5, 'D': 3 },
'D': { 'B': 10, 'C': 3 }
};
If we start at place A, the algorithm will find the shortest distance from A to every other place:
{
'A': 0,
'B': 4,
'C': 2,
'D': 5
}
This means it's 0 units from A to A (because we're already there!), 4 units from A to B, 2 units from A to C, and 5 units from A to D.
That's Dijkstra's Algorithm! It helps us find the shortest path on a map or any other network of connected places.
To use Dijkstra's Algorithm in your JavaScript code, you can call the dijkstra function with your graph and the starting point. It will return an object showing the shortest distances to all other places.
const shortestDistances = dijkstra(graph, 'A');
console.log(shortestDistances); // Output: { 'A': 0, 'B': 4, 'C': 2, 'D': 5 }
Now you know how to find the shortest path on a map using Dijkstra's Algorithm! ππΊοΈ