Create array and randomly choose row

drax007

Hi there,

I'd be ever so greatful if someone could help me please. I'm really trying to get my head around working with arrays and could really do with an example in a context i fully understand.
I have made a test page for this and made a query that will search for appropriate records in my database:

 <?php $colname_Class = "3";
$colname_Ships = "-1";
if (isset($_SESSION['MM_Username'])) {
  $colname_Ships = (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) ? $_SESSION['MM_Username'] : addslashes($_SESSION['MM_Username']);
}
mysql_select_db($database_swb, $swb);
$query_Ships = sprintf("SELECT * FROM ships WHERE PlayerName = %s AND Class=%s AND Template='1'", GetSQLValueString($colname_Ships, "text"),
GetSQLValueString($colname_Class, "int"));
$Ships = mysql_query($query_Ships, $swb) or die(mysql_error());
$row_Ships = mysql_fetch_assoc($Ships);
$totalRows_Ships = mysql_num_rows($Ships);



echo $row_Ships['ShipID']; echo ' ';
echo $row_Ships['ShipName']; echo ' ';
echo $row_Ships['Class']; echo ' ';
echo '  ';
echo $totalRows_Ships = mysql_num_rows($Ships); ?>

After i made the query i echo out the ShipID, ShipName and Class from the queey which displays:

5 New Ship 3 1

So you can see the ShipID = 5, the name of the Ship is New Ship, its Class is 3 and there is only 1 record found in the database that matches the search criteria.

Lets say there are 10 records in my database... What i really need to do is make an array of the outputted results, determine the number of records and then to randomly choose 1 of the results from the array.

Can you help me please?? If i can see an example in this context i feel i'd really learn something here.

If you can help, please do because im well stuck.

Thank you

Undrium

Yes, I think I can help you. What you can do is that you change your SQL-string to this instead:

$query_Ships = sprintf("SELECT * FROM ships WHERE PlayerName = %s AND Class=%s AND Template='1' ORDER BY RAND()", GetSQLValueString($colname_Ships, "text"),
GetSQLValueString($colname_Class, "int"));

This will still create an array of rows, but it will be in a random order.

drax007

Thanks for the reply, would it be possible for only 1 randomly generated record to be selected and outputted with this select query???

Thanks 🙂

Undrium

Add LIMIT 1 after RAND(). 😉

Edit: Allthough then you will only get the size 1 when you do mysql_num_rows().