def rank_items(self, userid, user_items, selected_items, recalculate_user=False):
        """ Rank given items for a user and returns sorted item list """
        # check if selected_items contains itemids that are not in the model(user_items)
        if max(selected_items) >= user_items.shape[1] or min(selected_items) < 0:
            raise IndexError("Some of selected itemids are not in the model")

        # calculate the relevance scores
        liked_vector = user_items[userid]
        recommendations = liked_vector.dot(self.similarity)

        # remove items that are not in the selected_items
        best = sorted(zip(recommendations.indices, recommendations.data), key=lambda x: -x[1])
        ret = [rec for rec in best if rec[0] in selected_items]

        # returned items should be equal to input selected items
        for itemid in selected_items:
            if itemid not in recommendations.indices:
                ret.append((itemid, -1.0))
        return ret