I am trying to take a set of words for example...

Apple
Banana
The
Orange
House
Boat
Lake
Car
And

I want to be able to output 50 of these words at random to a div using javascript. Is this possible and if so should I be looking at putting them into an array or something similar?

I am trying to take a set of words for example...

Apple
Banana
The
Orange
House
Boat
Lake
Car
And

I want to be able to output 50 of these words at random to a div using javascript. Is this possible and if so should I be looking at putting them into an array or something similar?

• javascript
• arrays
• random

• Of course this is possible. Start with an array ... and if you have any specific problem, you can e back to us. – devnull69 Commented Sep 7, 2012 at 10:47

4 Answers 4

Yes, that's possible, using the Math.random function to generate the text and innerHTML to fill a div.

The array make it easier to get the words.

var tokens = ['Apple', 'Banana', 'The' ...];
var text = '';
for (var i=0; i<50; i++) {
    text += tokens[Math.floor(Math.random()*tokens.length)];
}
document.getElementById('myDiv').innerHTML = text;

Yes, use an array. To get a random word from such an array, use the following:

function getRandomWord() {
   var words = ['Apple','Banana','The','Orange','House','Boat','Lake','Car','And'];
   return words[Math.floor(Math.random() * words.length)];
}

Then invoke that function to whatever extent you like.

var paragraph = [];
for(var i = 0; i < 50; i++)
    paragraph.push(getRandomWord());

$('#my-container').text( paragraph.join(' ') );

That's possible and here is a quick and dirty example of it. (Sorry I've got no more time atm)

var words = ['apple', 'beer', 'cake', 'potato', 'orange'],
    div = document.getElementById('foo');

for(i = 0; i < 50; i++) {
    div.innerHTML += ' ' + words[Math.floor(Math.random() * words.length)];
}

​

http://jsfiddle/LavY5/

Yes, put all your words in an Array. Then apply the Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm, to shuffle/randomize your words array. Then, take a slice of the array of your specified size, and print those words to the HTML:

var words = [ "Apple", "Banana", "The", "Orange", "House", "Boat", "Lake", "Car", "And" ];

function fisherYates (arr) {
  var n = arr.length;
  while (n) {
    var j = Math.floor(Math.random() * n--);
    var temp = arr[n];
    arr[n] = arr[j];
    arr[j] = temp;
  }
  return arr;
}

fisherYates(words); // shuffle
var randomParagraph = words.slice(0, 5).join(" "); // take 5 random words
document.write(randomParagraph);

DEMO. ​