What I am trying to achieve is to allocate a panel to the column with the least amount of panels in it, and if 2 of the columns have an equal amount of panels then I take the first column and insert it there. I have attempted to implement this, which I will show below however I want to first address the problem that I am having. I understand that my code may have many flaws, and so I am open to suggestion on how to make it better. so the error I am getting through firebug is
TypeError: columns[leastItems] is undefined
return columns[leastItems].id;
and here is my javascript code that I have implemented:
function DashboardAllocation() {
var columns = document.querySelectorAll('.col-md-4.column');
var noElemsInCol = new Array(columns.length);
//Get count of children in each column into array
for (var columnNumber = 0; columnNumber < columns.length; columnNumber++) {
noElemsInCol.push(countChildren(columns[columnNumber]));
}
//Compare all values to see if they are all the same or if the first column is 0
if (compareAllValues(noElemsInCol) || countChildren(columns[0] === 0)) {
//if it is then return the first columns id
return columns[0].id;
}
//Reference http://www.programmingsimplified.com/c/source-code/c-program-find-minimum-element-in-array
var leastItems = 1;
var minimum = countChildren(columns[0]);;
for (var i = 1; i < noElemsInCol.length; i++) {
if (noElemsInCol[i] < minimum) {
minimum = noElemsInCol[i];
leastItems = i + 1;
}
}
return columns[leastItems].id;
}
//Compares all the values in the array to check if they are equal
//Reference http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9973323/javascript-compare-3-values
function compareAllValues(a) {
for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
if (a[i] === null) { return false }
for (var j = 0; j < i; j++) {
if (a[j] !== a[i]) { return false }
}
}
return true;
}
function countChildren(Nodes) {
var childrenCount = 0;
for (var nodeType in Nodes.childNodes) {
//if the nodetype is an element then we will add one
if (nodeType == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) {
childrenCount++;
}
}
return childrenCount;
}
I have referenced the sources where I took code from and hope it helps to see where I am coming from and understand what I am trying to do