Getting a random value from a JavaScript array

Question

Consider:

var myArray = ['January', 'February', 'March'];     

How can I select a random value from this array using JavaScript?

Answer 1

It's a simple one-liner:

const randomElement = array[Math.floor(Math.random() * array.length)]; 

For example:

const months = ["January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July"];  const random = Math.floor(Math.random() * months.length); console.log(random, months[random]);

Answer 2

If you've already got underscore or lodash included in your project you can use _.sample.

// will return one item randomly from the array _.sample(['January', 'February', 'March']); 

If you need to get more than one item randomly, you can pass that as a second argument in underscore:

// will return two items randomly from the array using underscore _.sample(['January', 'February', 'March'], 2); 

or use the _.sampleSize method in lodash:

// will return two items randomly from the array using lodash _.sampleSize(['January', 'February', 'March'], 2);