Any way to shuffle content in multiple div elements

Question

I'm relatively new to Javascript and was wondering if there's a quick way to shuffle content that is contained in multiple <div> tags. For example

<div id='d1'>
  <span>alpha</span>
  <img src='alpha.jpg'>
</div>
<div id='d2'>
  <span>beta</span>
  <img src='beta.jpg'>
</div>
<div id='d3'>
  <span>gamma</span>
  <img src='gamma.jpg'>
</div>

<button onclick='shuffle_content();'>Shuffle</button>

After clicking on the button, I'd like the content in d1, d2, d3 to change places (for example maybe d3 would be first, then d1, then d2).

A quick way to kind of move things around is to copy the first div element (d1), then put it at the very end (after d3), and then delete the original d1. But that doesn't really randomize things. It just makes things go in the cycle (which might be ok).

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

are you ok with using a javascript library like jQuery? here's a quick jQuery example to accomplish what you're after. the only modification to your HTML is the addition of a container element as suggested:

<div id="shuffle">
    <div id='d1'>...</div>
    <div id='d2'>...</div>
    <div id='d3'>...</div>
</div>

and javascript:

function shuffle(e) {               // pass the divs to the function
    var replace = $('<div>');
    var size = e.size();

    while (size >= 1) {
       var rand = Math.floor(Math.random() * size);
       var temp = e.get(rand);      // grab a random div from our set
       replace.append(temp);        // add the selected div to our new set
       e = e.not(temp); // remove our selected div from the main set
       size--;
    }
    $('#shuffle').html(replace.html() );     // update our container div with the
                                             // new, randomized divs
}

shuffle( $('#shuffle div') );