PHP function of the day: array_rand()

For day 20 of 21 in the “PHP Function of the day” series, I’m going to look at array_rand().  The function takes a required array and an optional number of random keys to return.  It returns a random key (not the value).

Let’s take a look.

<?php

$names = array(“Joe”,”Jim”,”Sarah”,”Jill”);

$numbers = array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9);

$names_rand_keys = array_rand($names,3);

$numbers_rand_keys = array_rand($numbers);

echo $names[$names_rand_keys[0]].”<br />”;

echo $names[$names_rand_keys[1]].”<br />”;

echo $names[$names_rand_keys[2]].”<br />”;

print_r($numbers[$numbers_rand_keys]);

?>

See the output

As you can see, you can also probably just use rand() and just limit it to the size of the array.