word-lib

word-lib is a lightweight offline English word helper with no external dependencies based off of @Brandons42's word-exists. Its a tiny JS API for checking if a word exists and has the ability to generate a random word with options for a specified min/max length or a seed value for deterministic generations.

word-lib is currently in production use on my game Word Wurm.

Table of contents

• Install
• Usage
  • Imports
  • exists
  • random
• API
• License
• Contribute
  • Data

Install

$ npm install word-lib

Usage

Check if a word exists -- white space is trimmed, compares against lower-case. Hyphenated compound words aren't counted as words.

Imports

// CommonJS
const wordLib = require("word-lib");
// or cherry-pick
const { exists, random } = require("word-lib");

// ES Modules
import wordLib, { exists, random } from "word-lib";

Examples

wordLib.exists("word"); // true
wordLib.exists("library"); // true
wordLib.exists(" space "); // true

wordLib.exists("xyz"); // false
wordLib.exists("not-a-word"); // false
wordLib.exists("two words"); // false

wordLib.exists("a"); // false
wordLib.exists("a", { allowOneLetterWords: true }); // true

exists

word: string

The word that is being checked to exist

Options

type ExistsOptions = {
  allowOneLetterWords?: boolean; // default false
};

Rules

• If allowOneLetterWords is true, a and i are treated as valid one-letter words

Get a random word from the dictionary.

const { random } = require("word-lib");

// Any possible word (min defaults to 3)
random();

// Constrain by lengths
random({ maxLength: 5 });
random({ minLength: 6, maxLength: 10 });

// Seeded deterministic random
random({ seed: 42 });
random({ maxLength: 8, seed: "game-seed" });

random

Returns a random word from the dictionary.

Options

type RandomOptions = {
  minLength?: number; // default 3
  maxLength?: number; // optional upper bound
  seed?: number | string; // deterministic RNG when provided
};

Rules

• If minLength is provided, it must be >= 3
• If maxLength is provided, it must be >= 3
• If both are provided, maxLength must be >= minLength

API

This package exports two functions:

• exists(word: string, options?: { allowOneLetterWords?: boolean }) => boolean
• random(options?: { minLength?: number; maxLength?: number; seed?: number | string }) => string

License

Licensed under

• MIT (LICENSE / http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

Contribute

Any PR's for improvements or missing words are welcome.

Data

The English dictionary is grouped by two-letter prefixes for fast lookups.