[RESOLVED] Add numbers to column ++

hunna03

Okay, so I have flashcards. Right now I have them randomly being selected. However, randomly means sometimes seeing the same card 3 times in a row and seeing others almost never. SO... to alleviate this I need to add an incremental count. Here is my code currently:

if ($_POST['selection'] == 'EKG')
{
$options = $_POST['selection'];
$query = "Select id, question from master WHERE category1 = '$options' OR category2 = '$options' OR category3 = '$options' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,1";
$ekg = $_POST['selection'];
$result = mysql_query($query);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) 
{
    $question = $row["question"]; 
    $id =  $row["id"];

echo '</head>';
echo '<body>';
echo '<div id="wrap">';

echo '<p>Q: ' . $question;

To start this fix I've created two columns. One is called 'start' and the other is 'number'.

Basically what I envision the query above doing is looking at the start column for the number to reference. Then, it will pull up every card that has a lower number and display that. Once a user moves on, it will Increment the number in the 'number' column. Eventually, every number in the 'number' column will equal the card with the 'start' column, at which point the number of the 'start' card will increment and the process will do it all over again.

So For Instance:

Flashcard 1 is my reference/index/'start' card. It has a number of 2.
Flashcard 2 has a number of 1.
Flashcard 3 has a number of 1.
Flashcard 4 has a number of 1.

Flashcards 2, 3, 4 will be drawn randomly and shown. Once they are shown, their number will increment. Eventually their numbers will all be 2, at which time Flashcard 1 will increment to 3 - and the process begins again.

The problem is... I'm not sure how to code that. I'm familiar with the $a++ variable, I'm just not sure how to incorporate that into the code above. Any help would be appreciated.

Weedpacket

As far as I can see, you don't really need to count how many times a card has been shown; you only need to know if it has been shown while others haven't; it needs to wait until those others have been shown before it gets another chance.

So an "already_shown" column that contains either true or false would have enough information.

All the cards would start out false. When selecting a card, select only from those where already_shown=false.

Once selected, use an UPDATE statement to set that particular card's already_shown field to true.

That works for one round - eventually all the cards would have been shown and there would be no cards left to select from. I can think of two ways of dealing with that; one in PHP and the other in the database.

The PHP approach would be to attempt a selection: if it fails because every card has already_shown=true, then run an UPDATE statement to set them all back to false and try again.

The database idea is the same, only with everything written in SQL and attached to a trigger.

hunna03

Thanks!