Random echo: PHP

[Jahova]

Right. I'm useless with PHP so I'll explain what I would like..

Say I've got loads of different lines of song lyrics. I want to put these lyrics into a php script which would chose a random one each time the page is loaded / refreshed and echoed to the page.

Should be simple, I used to know how to do this but my old age has got the better of me (lol, jk).

Thanks, +REP to those who assist.

[Luke]

Put all the song lyrics on lines in notepad, save as TXT file

<?php
$quotes = "lyrics.txt";
$quotes = file($quotes);
srand((double)microtime() * 1000000);
$ranNum = rand(0, count($quotes)-1);
echo ($quotes[$ranNum]);
?>

[Jahova]

Thank you. Perfect

REP / thread closed.

[Blob]

Simpler way

<?php
$array = array("LINE1", "LINE2", "LINE3","etc..");

echo $array[ rand( 0, count( $array ) - 1 ) ];
?>

should work, untested

[Dentafrice]

Simpler way

<?php
$array = array("LINE1", "LINE2", "LINE3","etc..");

echo $array[ rand( 0, count( $array ) - 1 ) ];
?>

should work, untested

Then he has to put all those lyrics into that array... which is time consuming; as well as pointless when he could just separate each line from the text file... it's so much easier to put new lines then quotes and commas round each one.

[Jahova]

Thanks both. Any cleaner way to do it using the first method?

[Dentafrice]

Thanks both. Any cleaner way to do it using the first method?

You don't have to seed the RNG if you're using above PHP 4.2 I think?

[Jahova]

You don't have to seed the RNG if you're using above PHP 4.2 I think?

English would be brilliant Maybe an example? Thanks

[Dentafrice]

<?php

function random_quote($data) {
    $random_number = rand(0, count($data) - 1);
    return $data[$random_number];
}

$filename = "lyrics.txt"; // path to lyrics file
$data = file($filename); // gets each line of a file and puts it into an array.

echo random_quote($data);
echo random_quote($data);
?>

That lets you display a random quote each time you call random_quote.

[Jahova]

Thanks for your time, all. +REPPED