codeeverything / node-spell-checker

Simple Spell Checker in NodeJS

NodeJS Spell Checker

Uses BK Trees and Levenstein Distance to provide spelling correction suggestions via a simple API.

Originally inspired by Peter Norvig's essay on spell checking, and the references therein.

Usage

Run server.js:

$ node server.js

Navigate to the API endpoint /api/:word, for example:

/api/speling, and you'll be returned an array of possible corrections:

[
  "spelling",
  "dueling",
  "peking",
  "seeing",
  "sewing",
  "spring",
  "spying",
  "splint",
  "piling"
]

Generating the dictionary

A default dictionary file is provided in data/dic.json, but you can run node gendic.js if you want to generate your own. Simply change this line var files = ['big.txt']; so that the array contains your own source text file (should be the only entry).

Improvements

• Define some statistical model to better rank the suggestions. Cues could be taken from Peter Norvig's essay by using term frequency from the dictionary source text.
  • Based on previous correction selections
  • Based on common misspellings of words
  • With context of surrounding words/grammer