Implementing shortest path algorithm Java with list of edges

Question

I am writing a method in Java to find the shortest path between two nodes in a graph. The parameters are the following

• an array list of "edges": objects containing the index of the source node of the edge and the index of the destination node of the edge
• index1: the first index
• index2: the index I want to find the shortest path to.

I have written the following code:

    public static String shortestDistance(List<edge> edges, int index1, int index2) {
    String shortest = "";
        for (int i = 0; i < edges.size(); i++) {
            edge e = edges.get(i);
            if (e.src == index1) {
                  //shortest path here
                shortest = shortest + e.src + ", ";

            }
        }
        return shortest;
}

My goal is to return a string containing a list of the shortest possible path. How do I begin to implement an algorithm to search for the shortest path between the two indexes?

Answer 1

You can use Breadth First Search to find the shortest path from one node to another in a graph.

https://www.baeldung.com/java-breadth-first-search