Shuffling words in a sentence in javascript (coding horror - How to improve?)
javascript, shuffle
Solution
Almost similar to the python code:
var s = 'This is a sentence'
var shuffledSentence = s.split(' ').shuffle().join(' ');
For the above to work, we need to add a shuffle method to Array (using Fisher-Yates).
Array.prototype.shuffle = function() {
var i = this.length;
if (i == 0) return this;
while (--i) {
var j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1 ));
var a = this[i];
var b = this[j];
this[i] = b;
this[j] = a;
}
return this;
};
Problem
I'm trying to do something that is fairly simple, but my code looks terrible and I am certain there is a better way to do things in javascript. I am new to javascript, and am trying to improve my coding. This just feels very messy. All I want to do is to randomly change the order some words on a web page. In python, the code would look something like this: ``` s = 'THis is a sentence' shuffledSentence = random.shuffle(s.split(' ')).join(' ') ``` However, this is the monstrosity I've managed to produce in javascript ``` //need custom sorting function because javascript doesn't have shuffle? function mySort(a,b) { return a.sortValue - b.sortValue; } function scrambleWords() { var content = $.trim($(this).contents().text()); splitContent = content.split(' '); //need to create a temporary array of objects to make sorting easier var tempArray = new Array(splitContent.length); for (var i = 0; i < splitContent.length; i++) { //create an object that can be assigned a random number for sorting var tmpObj = new Object(); tmpObj.sortValue = Math.random(); tmpObj.string = splitContent[i]; tempArray[i] = tmpObj; } tempArray.sort(mySort); //copy the strings back to the original array for (i = 0; i < splitContent.length; i++) { splitContent[i] = tempArray[i].string; } content = splitContent.join(' '); //the result $(this).text(content); } ``` Can you help me to simplify things?