I'm working on a small Chrome extension soon to be released, however in this extension I must take a random item from an array and display it on the screen. In the past, I've worked with a lot of Ruby code, and remember the method '.sample' which displays a random item from an array on the screen.

Example (in Ruby):

farm_animals = ['cow', 'chicken', 'pig', 'horse']
puts farm_animals.sample

The output could end up being something like...

>> cow

Is there an equivalent to this handy array method in Javascript? Thanks!

I'm working on a small Chrome extension soon to be released, however in this extension I must take a random item from an array and display it on the screen. In the past, I've worked with a lot of Ruby code, and remember the method '.sample' which displays a random item from an array on the screen.

Example (in Ruby):

farm_animals = ['cow', 'chicken', 'pig', 'horse']
puts farm_animals.sample

The output could end up being something like...

>> cow

Is there an equivalent to this handy array method in Javascript? Thanks!

• javascript
• ruby
• methods
• google-chrome-extension

Share Improve this question Follow edited Oct 30, 2019 at 19:57 lacostenycoder 11.3k44 gold badges3636 silver badges5050 bronze badges asked Feb 15, 2012 at 0:54 beakrbeakr 5,8671313 gold badges4545 silver badges6666 bronze badges 2

• 1 I'm not familiar with Ruby and looking for .sample in google didn't turn up anything. Can you point me in a direction where I can see what sample does and I can likely help you out – Seth Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 0:58
• @Seth Here's the Rubydocs Array class & methods. THe .sample method is on the side panel in alphabetical order, and I've got the quick link to the .sample area. ruby-doc/core-1.9.3/Array.html#method-i-sample – beakr Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 1:04

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2 Answers 2

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Try:

var farm_animals = ['cow', 'chicken', 'pig', 'horse']
alert(farm_animals[Math.floor ( Math.random() * farm_animals.length )])

or as a function:

function sample(array) {
  return array[Math.floor ( Math.random() * array.length )]
}

console.log(sample(farm_animals))

If you're not averse to hacking built-in object prototypes:

Array.prototype.sample = function() {
  return this[~~(Math.random() * this.length)];
}

Then

var samp = ["hello", "friendly", "world"].sample();

gives you a random element.

A lot — many, most — people would say that such a not-so-useful function would not be worth the sin of polluting a built-in prototype like that. Follow your bliss.