Christmas PHP!!!!

[earthlingzed]

I am trying to make a randow name drawing app for a secret santa gift exchange. I have run into some difficulties that I am unable to diagnos. The symptom is this: Some people for an unexplained reason are getting no errors, but they are getting no name drawn. They get a message that says "you have drawn " and then no name. I thought I had built the loops to grab the name pretty well. The criteria for drawing the name are to 1. Draw a name that is not the same as the person drawing (var for this is called $name) 2. Draw a random name that is in the list ( has not been deleted from teh databse because it was already drawn).

Am I going about this task the wrong way? Should I use an SQL statment to do the grunt work rather than PHP? If so can you offer some help wih that?

Many thanks and Merry Christmas!!

<?

	function randomPick(){
	$rand_id = rand(1,7);
	return $rand_id;
	}

	function grabName($rand_id){
	$sql = "SELECT name FROM names WHERE id='$rand_id'";
	$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "log", "pass") or die("Could not connect to the database.");
	mysql_select_db("db_name",$db);
	$name_result = mysql_query($sql,$db) or die("There was a problem drawing the name.");
	$name_row = mysql_fetch_row($name_result);
	$person_name = $name_row[0];
	$person_num = mysql_num_rows($name_result);

	if($person_num == "1"){
		return $person_name;
	}else{
		return FALSE;
		}
	}

	function grabList($person_name){
	 #grab list if it is there
	$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "log", "pass") or die("Could not connect to the database.");
	mysql_select_db("db_name",$db);
	$list_result = mysql_query("SELECT list FROM lists WHERE name='$person_name'",$db);
	$list_row = mysql_fetch_row($list_result);
	$list = $list_row[0];
	$list_num = mysql_num_rows($list_result);

	if($list_num == "1") {


	 $list_result = mysql_query("SELECT list FROM lists WHERE name='$person_name'",$db) or die("There was a problem getting the Chritmas list.");
	 while ($list_row = mysql_fetch_row($list_result))
	 $list = $list_row[0];
	 return $list;

	 }else{

	 return "<p>Your person has not posted their list yet.<p>";
	 }
	}


	function sendEmail($person_name,$list,$email){
		#send email notification
		if(mail("$email", "Secret Santa", "You have drawn $person_name as your person. Below is their Christmas list.

		Christmas List
		$list","From:[e-mail]\r\nReply-to:[e-mail]")){
		return "An email has been sent to you<br> with your person's name and Christmas list.<p>";
			}else{
		return "There was some sort of problem sending an email with your person's name.";
		} 
	}

	function scratchOffList($person_name){
		$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "log", "pass") or die("Could not connect to the database.");
		mysql_select_db("db_name",$db);
		if(mysql_query("DELETE FROM names WHERE name='$person_name'",$db)){
			return TRUE;
		}else{
			return FALSE;
		}
	}

	#draw name
	do {
	$name_id = randomPick();
	}
	while($name_id == $name);

	do {
		$person_name = grabName($name_id);
		$list = grabList($person_name);
		}
		while($person_num != 0);



	echo sendEmail($person_name,$list,$email);
	if(scratchOffList($person_name) ===FALSE){
		echo "There was a problem scrathing the person off the list.";
				}

	#write out info
	echo "<table width='500' border='0' cellspacing='2' cellpadding='2'>
         <tr>
             <td align='left' valign='bottom' class='name'>You have drawn ".$person_name."!!!</b></td>";
	echo "</tr>
         <tr>
             <td align='left' valign='bottom' class='list' colspan='2'><b>Christmas List</b><p>".$list."<p></td>
         </tr>
</table>";

  ?>

[bastien]

is the random number generator...if you don't have seven names left, what happens? might it not be better to do a query to count the number of names in the table and then generate the random number?