June 20, 2013
Access an internally used list
Pulz’s Question:
I’m coding the Dijkstra algorithm in Java. My first method
public void populateDijkstraFrom(Node startNode)
creates a Linked List of nodes with its respective distances and predecessors. My second method
public List<Node> getShortestPath(Node startNode, Node targetNode)
is supposed to create a list of nodes with the shortest path from the startNode to the targetNode using the list of nodes from my populateDijkstraFrom method.
However, I don’t know how to access the list of nodes from my Dijkstra method in the getShortestPath method. I could change the return type from void to LinkedList but I was told that it works using void.
How do I do it?
Thanks
There are basically two ways of solving this.
Easiest one would be return the list of nodes on your method
public List<Node> populateDijkstraFrom(Node startNode) {
// ^ Configure to return list instead of void
// ......
return nodeList;
}
public List<Node> getShortestPath(Node startNode, Node targetNode) {
List<Node> pdList = populateDijkstraFrom(startNode);
// ^ --- Get the list by simply passing the same parameter to the method
}
Another is stated by Gian
