random question

Anon

hi,
I want to display random question from the database on the webpage. If there are ten questions on the database, these questions should totally be displayed on the webpage in a random way.

Can anyone help me or introduce some code?

cheers
Angela

mrdance

Do you just want to display one at a time? This example is for a MySQL database and assumes that you have a field which contains a questionnumber from on to ten.

Here's an example;

$randomnumber=rand(1,10);

$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM yourtable WHERE fieldquestionnumber='$randomnumber'", $db);
$row=mysql_fetch_array($result);

echo "One question is: ".$row['fieldquestionnumber'];

Hope this helps;

Anon

Thanks
But I want to display all questions at a time.

any idea?

Anon

Can't you shuffle() the array containing the questions?

mrdance

Good one!

Here's one code example;

<?
for ($i=0;$i<=9;$i++)
{
$random[]=$i;
}

shuffle($random);

foreach ($random as $key=>$value)
{
$result=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM yourtable WHERE fieldquestionnumber='$value'", $db);
$row=mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo $row['fieldquestionnumber']:
}

Anon

I just did a simliar thing over at MyBest50.com, so the sites are displayed randomly, so each site gets a chance of being listed at the top! (alphabetically wasn't fair on business begginin with Z!!)

Anon

thanks,Henrik and Danny.

It is brilliant. But i didn't get some points.

What foreach ($random as $key=>$value) mean?
I think it is one kind of Loop statement, isn't it? But i haven't seen this statement before.

thanks again.

Anon

that line loops for each value of $random, and the as "$key=>$value" puts the corresponding value into $value.

Check out the official php manual for full details:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.foreach.php