Graph Algorithms: Bellman-Ford Shortest Paths

Choose this endpoint over Dijkstra when your graph contains negative edge weights, since Dijkstra does not support them. Prefer this over Floyd-Warshall when you need single-source shortest paths (not all-pairs) or your graph has more than 100 nodes. Use this specifically when you need to detect negative cycles reachable from a given source node, such as arbitrage detection in financial graphs or constraint satisfaction problems. If you only need all-pairs shortest paths on a small graph, Floyd-Warshall may be more appropriate.

• Source node not present in edge list — returns error indicating source not found
• Graph exceeds 200-node or 1000-edge limit — returns error with size constraints
• Negative cycle detected reachable from source — returns verdict indicating negative cycle rather than distances
• Malformed edge string (wrong format or invalid node names) — returns parse error
• Target node specified but unreachable — returns null path and infinite or null distance
• Edge weight parsing failure for non-numeric weights — returns validation error