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up vote -1 down vote favorite

I need to get a random value with php function *array_rand*.

$input = array("Neo", "Morpheus", "Trinity", "Cypher", "Tank");
$rand_keys = array_rand($input, 2);
echo $input[$rand_keys[0]] . "\n";
echo $input[$rand_keys[1]] . "\n";

How to can I get value from this? Like a $input[$rand_keys];

Thanks in advance.

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You mean how you get the names? Don't you get 2 random names from the array with the above code? Like here php.net/manual/en/function.array-rand.php –  Robin V. Aug 4 '13 at 19:19
 
Sounds like he's looking for a way to get a bunch of array values at once, given a bunch of keys. –  cHao Aug 4 '13 at 19:23
 
Give some more details on what you mean by $input[$rand_keys] -- what kind of result are you trying to get? –  GreatBigBore Aug 4 '13 at 19:24
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3 Answers

up vote 0 down vote

You are using it correctly. array_rand returns a set of keys for random entries of your array. In your case, though, if you want to pick all entries in a randomized fashion you should be using:

$rand_keys = array_rand($input, 5);

If you want an array out of this, you could just do $rand_values = array($input[$rand_keys[0]], $input[$rand_keys[1]], $input[$rand_keys[2]], $input[$rand_keys[3]], $input[$rand_keys[4]]);.

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up vote 0 down vote

I haven't seen a built-in way yet. I tend to do something like this:

$rand_values = array_map(
    function($key) use ($input) { return $input[$key]; },
    $rand_keys
);

But that's because i thoroughly detest repeating myself. :P

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up vote 0 down vote

So many ways to do it, including simple loops... Here's probably the most compact one-liner:

$randValues = array_intersect_key($input, array_flip(array_rand($input, 2)));
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