Jekyll, Liquid, Random numbers

Question

I would like to have a set of links

<li>
  <h2>Random Articles</h2>  
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#">Old article 1</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Old article 1</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">Old article 1</a></li>
  </ul>
</li>

But I want to generate the links from a random selection of my posts. I'm using jekyll and liquid to generate the site. I must use built in parts of jekyll as I'm hosting on github. I'm not really sure where to start on this. Google searches on the topic are fruitless.

Answer 1

This is choosing a random quote from a JSON file in _data but the principle should work with your posts as well:

{% assign random = site.time | date: "%s%N" | modulo: site.data.inspirational-quotes.size %}

<blockquote>&ldquo;{{ site.data.inspirational-quotes[random].quote }}&rdquo; <cite>{{ site.data.inspirational-quotes[random].person }}</cite></blockquote>

Answer 2

I found this article to be useful to generating numbers using Liquid, it is not straight forward, nonetheless, it is the most elegant way to generate a random number with min/max.

The following example is for a number between 65 & 80.

{% assign min = 65 %}
{% assign max = 80 %}
{% assign diff = max | minus: min %}
{% assign randomNumber = "now" | date: "%N" | modulo: diff | plus: min %}