Is there any way to generate a random number within a given range using only CSS?

Question

For example, something like:

div {
   margin-left: random(-100, 100);
}

@ppperry: I can, but it just seems rather inefficient to me. There should be a way to generate random numbers in CSS, like how you can do math in it with `Calc()`. — Alexcamostyle, Nov 14 '15 at 02:11
Exactly what you're doing isn't possible in pure CSS, but [something similar is](http://codepen.io/Zeaklous/pen/BQjGzv) :P — Zach Saucier, Nov 15 '16 at 19:56

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

There is currently no way to do this in pure CSS, however if you're using a CSS pre-processor, such as LESS, then you can do the following:

@randomMargin: `Math.round(Math.random() * 100)`;

div {
  margin-left: ~'@{randomMargin}px';
}

The reason this works is because LESS will evaluate JavaScript expressions.

If you want to break it into a random mixin/function, you could use:

.random(@min, @max) {
  @random: `Math.round(Math.random() * (@{max} - @{min}) + @{min})`;
}

div {
  .random(-100, 100);
  margin-left: ~'@{random}px';
}

Which will compile with a different margin-left value each time:

div {
  margin-left: 18px;
}

However, I am not sure how practical this would be in a production environment since your CSS should already be compiled/minified rather than compiled on the fly. Therefore you should just use straight JavaScript in order to achieve this.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 14 '15 at 02:10

1

Dont think CSS has that capability but LESS will help

http://csspre.com/random-numbers/

answered Nov 14 '15 at 02:10

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Is there any way to generate a random number within a given range using only CSS?

2 Answers2

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