Node Boggle Solver

Boggle is a game in which players try to find as many words as possible in a 4x4 grid of letters.

This solver is built with JavaScript using a Trie for dictionary storage.

The default dictionary is SOWPODS and contains approximately 260,000 English words.

Installation

Pull down dependencies:

npm install

This project uses Jest for unit testing and ESLint for linting.

To run units tests:

npm test

To run linting:

npm run lint

Run tests in watch mode:

npm run test-watch

Get code coverage report:

npm run test-coverage

How to Use

To use the solver, install and save it to your package dependencies:

npm install node-boggle-solver --save

Instantiate the solver with the default dictionary or with a custom dictionary:

// pull in the module
var boggle = require('node-boggle-solver');

// or import using ES2015 modules syntax
import boggle from 'node-boggle-solver';

// instantiate and use the default dictionary
var defaultSolver = boggle();

// or use your own dictionary
var customSolver = boggle(['hello', 'world']);

Solver

The solver accepts grids of 3x3 and upwards. Letters can be lowercase , uppercase or space delimited. A callback function should be used to return any error and the solved data.

Example:

var boggle = require('node-boggle-solver');

// instantiate the solver
var solver = boggle();

// solve a 3x3 grid
solver.solve('ABCDEFGHI', function(err, result) { });
solver.solve('abcdefghi', function(err, result) { });
solver.solve('abc def ghi', function(err, result) { });

// solve a 4x4 grid
solver.solve('sers patl gine ress', function(err, result) { });

// solve a 5x5 grid
solver.solve('rscls deiae gnrps iaeso lmidn', function(err, result) { });

The first argument of the callback function is reserved for an error object. If an error occurs, it will be returned by the error argument.

The second argument is the data returned by the solver. It contains multiple properties and methods that act on the words found by the solver:

Name	Type	Return Type	Description
full	property	Array	An array of objects containing word found and corresponding co-ordinates in the board
list	property	Array	List of words found
hasWord	method	Boolean	Checks if the passed in word is contained within the resulting word list
contains	method	Array	Filters word list to words that contain any of the letters passed in
startsWith	method	Array	Filters word list to words that start with the given prefix
endsWith	method	Array	Filters word list to words that end with the given suffix
lengthOf	method	Array	Filters word list to the specified length

Examples:

solver.solve('abc def ghi', function(err, result) {
  if (err) {
    throw(err);
  }

  var listWithCoords = result.full;

  listWithCoords[0]; // { word: 'badge', coords: [ [0, 1], [0, 0], [1, 0], [2, 0], [1, 1] ] }

  result.list.length; // 25
  result.list; // ['abed', 'bad', 'bade', 'badge', ...]

  result.hasWord('badge'); // true
  result.hasWord('badges'); // false

  result.contains('dahe'); // ['head']
  result.contains('ab'); // ['abed', 'bad', 'bade', 'badge', 'bead', 'dab']

  result.startsWith('ab'); // ['abed']
  result.endsWith('ed'); // ['abed', 'bed', 'fed', 'ged', 'hied']

  result.lengthOf(5); // ['badge']
});

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Lyndsey Browning

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.