

Implementing a Priority Queue (PQ) in JavaScript This tutorial will start with a simple implementation and then build it to a robust implementation while making it easy to follow. datastructures-js: heap.js, priorityQueue.js.dsa.js: heap.js, priority-queue.js, min-heap.js, max-heap.js.closure-library: heap.js, priorityqueue.js.Some priority queue JavaScript implementations on the wild: The distance among points is used as a priority. Used in some graph algorithms like Dijkstra for finding the shortest path between two points.

Keeping track of median numbers in constant time.Keeping track of top k elements efficiently.Asynchronous control flows like firing events (or notifying observers) in a certain order.Scheduling tasks in a system: “critical” goes before “shadow drawing” for instance.Forward network packages in order of urgency (e.g., “real-time video call” should go before “time sync checks,” so to speak).System to triage hospital patients and attend them by their severity order.There are many real-world applications for priority queues, such as: What is a priority queue good for? / Applications Later in this post, we will explore how we can implement an efficient solution for these cases. Why a priority queue? Can’t we just have different queues for each priority? That only works if you have a few priorities, but sometimes you have infinite possibilities (e.g., the distance between two points, ETA, etc.). If all elements in a PQ have the same priority, then it will behave like a regular queue. If you have Seniors in the line, you will take them first, even if other people arrived before them. You can add preferred lanes, for example, Seniors (65+ years old) and pregnant women. If we go back to the example of a line of people in a supermarket. The priority queue adds a priority to each element’s value. For instance, a line of people waiting to pay at the Supermarket behaves like a queue: first-in, first-served, or FIFO (first in, first out). The queue is a list of elements taken in the same order as they arrived. What’s a Priority Queue (PQ)?Ī priority queue is a data structure that extends the queue by a priority dimension. In this post, we discuss, what it is, real-world applications, and we explore two different implementations, the latter one being more robust. A priority queue is a versatile data structure that is good to have under your algorithmic toolbelt.
