how do you do a random thing like this...

philvia

i want a thing that everyday selects a random person from the database... the only way i know how to do that is by listing all the usernames and giving them a number then it'll select a random number and display the 'whatever'... but since the database is involved I dunno how to do that. I want it to select 'user' from 'users' and the number of users is always climbing..anyone know what i'm talking about? here is a link to what i want.. look at the 'User of the day' thing on this page...

here

Mordecai

They probably have a cronjob set up that runs a script that does the following things:
Queries a database to get a random person (SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1)
Adds this user to the database for the "user of the day" column (UPDATE oftheday SET var1='$fromscript' WHERE type='user')

or something...

batman

You will have to set it up as a crone job to do the every day thing. But this is what I would use:

$date = date('w');  // Numeric representation of the day of the week
if($date = "0")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
if($date = "1")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
if($date = "2")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
if($date = "3")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
if($date = "4")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
if($date = "5")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
if($date = "6")
{
$query = mysql_query("SELECT user FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
}
else
{
exit();
}

I'm not sure on how this will turn out, but it's supposed to choose one random person every day.

See if it works. 🙂

philvia

whenever i paste the coding in the page it's just blank...

<?
$pagetitle="Registration";
include("../include/head.php");
echo $harsss;

$date = date('w');  // Numeric representation of the day of the week 
if($date = "0") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
if($date = "1") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
if($date = "2") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
if($date = "3") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
if($date = "4") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT usenamer FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
if($date = "5") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
if($date = "6") 
{ 
$query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1"); 
} 
else 
{ 
exit(); 
}
?>

kevinsequeira

u need to use == when checking in a if-statement like

if($date == "0") and so on

i dont really understand the logic cause it does the same query whatever the day of the week.

the reason u're getting a blank page is cause the query is not executed and no results displayed
reg
kevin

The_Chancer

Taking mordecai's example - you don't actually need a cron job for this...

In the users table, create a useroftheday column, the value put into this will be a timestamp.

On the page load, check if the day is the same or greater (server time only) if it is greater, then rand() the number of users and set the new useroftheday and insert the timestamp.

Then to display, just pick the user which has a value in the useroftheday column.

$query=mysql_query("SELECT useroftheday FROM users WHERE useroftheday!=''");
$time=mysql_fetch_row($query);
if (!date("d",$time)<!date("d",time()))
{
    $query = mysql_query("SELECT username FROM users ORDER by rand() desc LIMIT 1");
    $user=mysql_fetch_row($query);
    $query=mysql_query("UPDATE users SET useroftheday=time() WHERE username='".$user."'");
}

Somethign like that anyway....

m3rajk

Originally posted by philvia
i want a thing that everyday selects a random person from the database... the only way i know how to do that is by listing all the usernames and giving them a number then it'll select a random number and display the 'whatever'... but since the database is involved I dunno how to do that. I want it to select 'user' from 'users' and the number of users is always climbing..anyone know what i'm talking about? here is a link to what i want.. look at the 'User of the day' thing on this page...

here

if you have a user id (int-autoincrement) field, then you can call random, multiply by the number of users, and round down

you can eithr set something to do this on a 24 hour basis and then have that be remembered, or you could have a random member and have it be on each index pageload