I'm trying to write a program that'll find the MST of a given undirected weighted graph with Kruskal's and Prim's algorithms. I've successfully implemented Kruskal's algorithm in the program, but I'm having trouble with Prim's. To be more precise, I can't figure out how to actually build the Prim function so that it'll iterate through all the vertices in the graph. I'm getting some IndexOutOfBoundsException errors during program execution. I'm not sure how much information is needed for others to get the idea of what I have done so far, but hopefully there won't be too much useless information.

This is what I have so far:

I have a Graph, Edge and a Vertex class.

• Vertex class mostly just an information storage that contains the name (number) of the vertex.

• Edge class can create a new Edge that has gets parameters (Vertex start, Vertex end, int edgeWeight). The class has methods to return the usual info like start vertex, end vertex and the weight.

• Graph class reads data from a text file and adds new Edges to an ArrayList. The text file also tells us how many vertecis the graph has, and that gets stored too.

In the Graph class, I have a Prim() -method that's supposed to calculate the MST:

    public ArrayList<Edge> Prim(Graph G) {

    ArrayList<Edge> edges = G.graph; // Copies the ArrayList with all edges in it.
    ArrayList<Edge> MST = new ArrayList<Edge>();

    Random rnd = new Random();

    Vertex startingVertex = edges.get(rnd.nextInt(G.returnVertexCount())).returnStartingVertex(); // This is just to randomize the starting vertex.

    // This is supposed to be the main loop to find the MST, but this is probably horribly wrong..
    while (MST.size() < returnVertexCount()) {

        Edge e = findClosestNeighbour(startingVertex);
        MST.add(e);
        visited.add(e.returnStartingVertex());
        visited.add(e.returnEndingVertex());
        edges.remove(e);

    }

    return MST;
}

The method findClosesNeighbour() looks like this:

public Edge findClosestNeighbour(Vertex v) {

    ArrayList<Edge> neighbours = new ArrayList<Edge>();
    ArrayList<Edge> edges = graph;

    for (int i = 0; i < edges.size() -1; ++i) {

        if (edges.get(i).endPoint() == s.returnVertexID() && !visited(edges.get(i).returnEndingVertex())) {

            neighbours.add(edges.get(i));
        }
    }

    return neighbours.get(0); // This is the minimum weight edge in the list.
}

ArrayList<Vertex> visited and ArrayList<Edges> graph get constructed when creating a new graph.

Visited() -method is simply a boolean check to see if ArrayList visited contains the Vertex we're thinking about moving to. I tested the findClosestNeighbour() independantly and it seemed to be working but if someone finds something wrong with it then that feedback is welcome also.

Mainly though as I mentioned my problem is with actually building the main loop in the Prim() -method, and if there's any additional info needed I'm happy to provide it.

Thank you.

Edit: To clarify what my train of thought with the Prim() method is. What I want to do is first randomize the starting point in the graph. After that, I will find the closest neighbor to that starting point. Then we'll add the edge connecting those two points to the MST, and also add the vertices to the visited list for checking later, so that we won't form any loops in the graph.

Here's the error that gets thrown:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 0, Size: 0
    at java.util.ArrayList.rangeCheck(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.ArrayList.get(Unknown Source)
    at Graph.findClosestNeighbour(graph.java:203)
    at Graph.Prim(graph.java:179)
    at MST.main(MST.java:49)

Line 203: return neighbour.get(0); in findClosestNeighbour()

Line 179: Edge e = findClosestNeighbour(startingVertex); in Prim()