abstract-pathfinder

Completely agnostic A* pathfinding.

Doesn't care how your data is structured. Just implement a minimal set of accessors, and this module will apply A* to whatever data or graph you're using.

Installation:

npm i --save abstract-pathfinder

Usage:

var Pathfinder = require('abstract-pathfinder')
var finder = new Pathfinder()

// implement stuff
finder.nodeToPrimitive = function (node) { ... }
finder.getNeighbors = function (node) { ... }
finder.getMovementCost = function (nodeA, nodeB) { ... }
finder.getHeuristic = function (nodeA, nodeB) { ... }

// specify two nodes and find a path
var path = finder.findPath(startNode, endNode)

Note that node here means an whatever you're using to represent positions in the graph you're findind a path through. Nodes can be any type, as long as you implement the methods consistently.

Details:

• nodeToPrimitive should return a string or number (uniquely) for the given node
• getNeighbors should return an array of nodes directly accessible from the given one
• getMovementCost should return a number for the cost of moving between neighboring nodes. Negative costs mean that movement is impossible.
• getHeuristic should return a A* heuristic number. Typically this means a lower limit of the total cost of moving between the two (not necessarily neighboring) nodes.
• findPath returns an array of nodes, or [] if no path was found

See the examples folder for some working demos. Example 1 uses strings for nodes; Example 2 uses objects.

By:

Copyright Andy Hall, 2016. MIT license.