Implement Array Shuffling in MooTools

By  on  

While shuffling the order of array elements isn't a greatly useful function, I recently found myself needing to accomplish the task. I found a great post about how to achieve this feat using jQuery. Here's how to implement array shuffling in MooTools.

The MooTools JavaScript

Array.implement({
	shuffle: function() {
		//destination array
		for(var j, x, i = this.length; i; j = parseInt(Math.random() * i), x = this[--i], this[i] = this[j], this[j] = x);
		return this;
	}
});

This likely wont be used in the core framework but does have its uses.

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Facebook Sliders With Mootools and CSS

    One of the great parts of being a developer that uses Facebook is that I can get some great ideas for progressive website enhancement. Facebook incorporates many advanced JavaScript and AJAX features: photo loads by left and right arrow, dropdown menus, modal windows, and...

  • By
    PHP / MooTools 1.2 Accordion Helper

    The MooTools Accordion plugin seems to be the plugin that people seem to have the most problems with. It's an awesome plugin, so I can see why so many people want to use it, but I think that may be part of the problem.

Discussion

  1. Another way (more elegant in my opinion):

    Array.implement({  
        shuffle:function() {  
            this.sort(function (x,y) { return Math.floor(Math.random()*3)-1; });
            return this;
        }  
    
    
    });
    
    alert([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8].shuffle());
    
  2. @Elad: Awesome! Nice work. Definitely more elegant.

  3. Just a note that you can do cool stuff like this with Array Shuffling. :)

  4. @Lim Chee Aun: Awesome!

  5. I’ll point out that @David’s example is guaranteed to not require any additional storage space (it shuffles in place), is unbiased toward permutations, and runs in O(n) time. @Elad’s shuffle depends on the browser’s implementation of sort(). It may require more storage space, it may be biased to certain permutations, and it will run in O(n log n) time or worse due to the nature of sorting. However, I’m guessing that anything shuffled in JS is going to be small and no one will care if it is biased as long as it “seems” random.

  6. olivier

    I’ve tested both Elad and David script on a 27 lenght array… the shuffling is far better using David’s one….
    Anyone for the best of both world : efficiency and elegance ?
    Anyway thank you so much for the tip !

  7. I’m trying to learn mootools (both in a general sense, and all over again with 1.2), and javascript OOP at the same time. How I use this to shuffle the order of some list elements on a webpage?

    And, if you don’t mind, how would I do this in 1.1 vs. 1.2?

  8. Hehe although the original idea is older than my mom (probably no one here knows the creator of this…), I would be glad if people could copy my things keeping the credits ^^

    http://jsfromhell.com/array/shuffle

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!