[RESOLVED] Randomising a link

Jon12345

I have this code:

switch ($animal) {
case "Dog":
// Offer 123
$product = "http://site1.com?var=$var";
break;
case "Cat":
// Offer 456
$product = "http://site2.com?var=$var";
break;
etc....
}

But I want to send have 2 links rotated under each case.

e.g.

$product = "http://site1a.com?var=$var"; 50% of the time
$product = "http://site1b.com?var=$var"; 50% of the time

It would choose site1a.com 50% of the time and site1b.com 50% of the time. This would be ideal. Alternatively, if it randomly chose either one but over time it would average roughly 50% exposure for each link.

Any ideas on how I might achieve this?

Thanks,

Jon

laserlight

You could set an array of the appropriate links, and then use [man]array_rand/man to select a random link. For example:

$links = array();
switch ($animal) {
case "Dog":
    $links = array('http://site1a.com', 'http://site1b.com');
    break;
case "Cat":
    $links = array('http://site2a.com', 'http://site2b.com');
    break;
// ...
}

$product = array_rand($links) . "?var=$var";

Jon12345

I like that idea in principle, but it seems to be breaking my code. Is there a typo in it?

laserlight

Yes, though you should have found it if you had read the PHP manual on array_rand() and adapted my example code instead of blindly copying it :p

array_rand() returns a key if only one element is to be chosen, so you would access the element as $links[array_rand($links)]

Jon12345

Works as hoped. Thank you!