Making a unique account number

Anon

Hi, I have to find a way to create a unique account number for every user that signs up for a system that i was asked to create, but i need a little help!

If anyone is able to answer this question that will be a great step forward for me.

What i need is to be able to take the first 3 characters from their last name then add a 4 digit number to the end

example: MCG-1234

I have no control over how i get the name as it is supplied from another source and comes as one line like so - First Middle Last

example: Charles Stuart McGrotty

I want to first 3 letter of the last name only followed by a - (hyphen), then a random 4 digit number that is not already used with the 3 letter prefix

another example:

My account number may be MCG-2843
another account starting with MCG may be MCG-3846, it can NOT have MCG-2843 as that is already taken by me.

But if the last name was Smith then SMI-2843 is allowed.

I hope I have not lost you...

So, how do I trim the name to give me just the first 3 letters of the last name, and how do i make sure that the 4 digit number after this is uniqu to that 3 letter prefix, but still available for a different 3 letter prefix?

To add to the complexity, there may not be a middle name, so it could just be Allen Smith (no middle name).

So looking for the second (space) character in the string will not work as there may only be 1.

Anon

Please post a reply even if you have read and understand this and will get back to me later. Just so I know someone is looking into it, to help me out here!

I am truly stuck. I tried trim() ltrim() and others str commands but can not get a working model.

SO PLEASE HELP!

van__

A little long winded but... very random
<?
$lastName = "Mitchell";
$myID = strtoupper(substr($lastName,0,3)).'-'.substr(preg_replace('/[a-z]*/i','',md5(uniqid(rand()))),2,4);
echo $myID;
?>

Anon

ok thnx that sort of works, but now i have to split the name. i was just looking at strrpos() to find the last needle within the haystack - the (space) character!

so if the name is charles stuart mcgrotty it finds and returns the number of the second space (15 in this case - if i counted it correctly).

so how do i get it to return everything after the second space (or the first space if no middle name was given)?

van__

Ya, I just saw that myself... you needed the name split.

No biggy...

<?
$name = "Charles Stuart McGrotty";
$myID = strtoupper(substr(preg_replace('/[a-z]\s+[a-z-]\s?([a-z-])/i','\1',$name),0,3)).'-'.substr(preg_replace('/[a-z]/i','',md5(uniqid(rand()))),2,4);
echo $myID;
?>

Anon

PERFECT!!! - Thnx

YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER!

van__

Sorry about that, here's one that removed all but the last name from the name string...

<?
$name = "Charles Stuart McGrotty";
$myID = strtoupper(substr(preg_replace('/\s+([a-z-])$/i','\1',$name),0,3)).'-'.substr(preg_replace('/[a-z]/i','',md5(uniqid(rand()))),2,4);
echo $myID;
?>

Anon

ok, that works if there are two spaces (three parts to the name), but if i only have two parts ie: first and last, then it does not put the 3 letters at the start

Anon

also what if i get a name that has like 4 parts to it, i need it to search for the last space then get the 3 letters that follow on from that.

Thank you fo everything that you have done so far, this has shown me some great progress, but it is not the end for me just yet!

van__

ech.
Right after I got through with that, I realized it wasn't pulling the right value.
Here's another take, with an additional line of code to allow for a preg_split instead.

<?
$name = "Charles Stuart McGrotty";
$name = preg_split('/\s/',$name);
$myID = strtoupper(substr($name[count($name)-1],0,3)).'-'.substr(preg_replace('/[a-z]*/i','',md5(uniqid(rand()))),2,4);
echo $myID;
?>