jQuery select random elements with same class

Question

I have elements with class \"selectElement\". When I click on element with that class, I \"select\" it, and give it another class \"selectedElements\", if it doesn\'t alread

Answer 1

Whenever you want to pick N elements really at random out of X, the solution is the Fisher-Yates shuffle. This page has a Javascript implementation (plus rationale, plus nice animations, so go have a look):

function shuffle(array) {
  var m = array.length, t, i;

  // While there remain elements to shuffle…
  while (m) {

    // Pick a remaining element…
    i = Math.floor(Math.random() * m--);

    // And swap it with the current element.
    t = array[m];
    array[m] = array[i];
    array[i] = t;
  }

  return array;
}

Given the shuffle, you can then pick X elements at random with

var items = shuffle($(".selectElement")).slice(0, X);

Here's a working fiddle to play with.

Footnote: since you are only interested in a certain amount of random picks, there's no need to unconditionally shuffle the whole input array as shuffle does above; you could shuffle only a small part and then use .slice to cut it off and work with it. I 'm leaving this as an exercise; be careful that you don't grab the *un*shuffled part by mistake!