Get a random element from a JavaScript array
javascript
Table of Contents
To get a random element from an array, you can use a couple of Math
functions to generate a random index and retrieve a value.
function random(items) {
return items[Math.floor(Math.random() * items.length)]
}
How it works
Math.random()
generates a random float between 0
and 1
. The generated float is always less than 1
, so when we multiply it by the length of the array, it's always going to be less than items.length
.
Since the result of this operation is a floating-point number and arrays are integer-based, we can use Math.floor()
to round that number down.
This approach guarantees that the generated index is always in the range 0..items.length
and will never produce an invalid index.
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