Help choosing more than one item from an array

justjim1220

@strawberry-3-141

Yeah, I got that while trying to write what I had going. Your example looks more correct.

So, now I’m looking at your example but not exactly sure where to insert it into the code to get it to work.

in the config.js, I am looking at the lifeforms array as such:

lifeForms: "Striped Bass,Praying Mantis,Tigers,Hummingbirds,Venus Flytrap,Fox,Bald Eagle",

then I added this to the defaults in the MMM-EOL.js:

lifeForms: ["", "", ""],

then I added your example to the start function:

        var lifeFormIds = this.config.lifeForms.split(',');
        var lifeFormIds =[];
        for (let lifeForm of lifeForms) {
            if (this.config.lifeFormArray[lifeForm]) {
                lifeFormIds.push(this.config.lifeFormArray[lifeForm]);
            }
        }

        //  Set locale.
        this.url = "http://eol.org/api/pages/1.0.json?batch=false&id=" + this.config.lifeFormIds.join(',') +

I know this is definitely NOT right. This is where I am getting confused…
Having 2 separate < var lifeFormIds > declared doesn’t look right.
And, placing the ‘join’ part after the URL doesn’t look right either…

sdetweil

ok, your source ‘lifeFormArray’ is a hash… good for looking up randomly

now to get the user specified list into something usable, split is the way as already posted

// if user specified something
if(this.config.lifeForms.length >0 )
{
     // split will return an array with only one entry if no comma found
     this.config.user_keys=this.config.lifeForms.split(',');
}
else
     // add an entry to a special lifeFormArray entry for missing config info
     this.config.user_keys.push("none");

now, you want random, or walk the array of user_keys?

function getRandomInt(max) {
  return Math.floor(Math.random() * Math.floor(max));
} 

// get one of the user specified data keys, using random
var key=this.config.user_keys[this.getRandomInt(this.config.user_keys.length)];

// append that id value to the url.
this.url = "http://eol.org/api/pages/1.0.json?batch=false&id=" +this.lifeFormArray.key;

its unclear if u wanted all or just one…