CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phprandom
Matt
Matt

Reputation: 173

PHP / Curl To Randomize Text Between Two Tags

Below is my working code that pulls a text file from a remote location and inserts into the html body of a page a specific line. The code works just fine as it is now. I want to do an addition to the code however and have it randomize the line that it gets. Here is what I'm wanting to do.

The text file that is being pulled will have a varied amount of lines. Only one line is chosen via the echo $lines[0]; which tells which line to get. The line will be formatted like this..

<p>This is a line of text <a href="http://domain1.com">domain 1</a>. This is a line of text.</p><p>This is a line of text <a href="http://domain2.com">domain 2</a>. This is a line of text.</p><p>This is a line of text <a href="http://domain3.com">domain 3</a>. This is a line of text.</p>

All of that would be one line and pulled into the html of the page. The above example would display 3 paragraphs of text with links in the order above.

What I would like to do is have that line of text randomize between the <p>..</p> So for instance if I put the below code on Site A the output would be in order of domain 1 then domain 2 and then domain 3. If I put the code on Site B I would like it to be domain 3 and then domain 1 and then domain 2. To display them in random order, not the exact order for each time I put the code on a site.

I don't know if there would need to be some sort of cache on the site I have the code on to remember which random order to display in. That is what I want. I do not want a random order on each page load.

I hope this makes sense. If not please tell me so I can try and explain it better. Here is my working code as of now. Can anyone help me get this working? Thank you very much for your help.

<?php
function url_get_contents ($url) {
    if (function_exists('curl_exec')){ 
        $conn = curl_init($url);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, true);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT,  true);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        $url_get_contents_data = (curl_exec($conn));
        curl_close($conn);
    }elseif(function_exists('file_get_contents')){
        $url_get_contents_data = file_get_contents($url);
    }elseif(function_exists('fopen') && function_exists('stream_get_contents')){
        $handle = fopen ($url, "r");
        $url_get_contents_data = stream_get_contents($handle);
    }else{
        $url_get_contents_data = false;
    }
return $url_get_contents_data;
}
?>

<?php
$data = url_get_contents("http://mydomain.com/mytextfile.txt");
if($data){
$lines = explode("\n", $data);
echo $lines[0];
}
?>

Upvotes: 0

Views: 364

Answers (4)

Jeff C.
Jeff C.

Reputation: 1

Sounds like your really looking for a way to have unique content or maybe also have the appearance to updated content on your HTML page. This has been extremely useful for me and Im sure many others will like it as well even though it is a bit different than what you are trying to do.

This will grab nested Spintax from a text file. It will then spin the content and display in your page. Your page will need to be .php however there is a way for this to work on an HTML page that's what I use this for.

Spintax Example: {cat|Dog|Mouse} Works on Sentence Spins, Spin/Rotate images, spin HTML code etc... There are many things that you can do with this.

<?php
function spin($s){
preg_match('#\{(.+?)\}#is',$s,$m);
if(empty($m)) return $s;

$t = $m[1];

if(strpos($t,'{')!==false){
    $t = substr($t, strrpos($t,'{') + 1);
}

$parts = explode("|", $t);
$s = preg_replace("+\{".preg_quote($t)."\}+is",                    
$parts[array_rand($parts)], $s, 1);

return spin($s);
  }


$file = "http://www.yourwebsite/Data.txt";
 $f = fopen($file, "r");
while ( $line = fgets($f, 1000) ) {
echo spin($line);
}





?>

Upvotes: 0

JBES
JBES

Reputation: 1567

Without modifying your code too much and without getting into storing values in databases, using flat file storage you can do something like the following:

Create a file called "count.txt" and place it in the same location as your php file.

<?php
function url_get_contents ($url) {
    if (function_exists('curl_exec')){ 
        $conn = curl_init($url);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, true);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT,  true);
        curl_setopt($conn, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
        $url_get_contents_data = (curl_exec($conn));
        curl_close($conn);
    }elseif(function_exists('file_get_contents')){
        $url_get_contents_data = file_get_contents($url);
    }elseif(function_exists('fopen') && function_exists('stream_get_contents')){
        $handle = fopen ($url, "r");
        $url_get_contents_data = stream_get_contents($handle);
    }else{
        $url_get_contents_data = false;
    }
return $url_get_contents_data;
}

$data = url_get_contents("http://mydomain.com/mytextfile.txt");

$fp=fopen('count.txt','r');//Open count.txt for reading
$count=fread($fp,4) ? $count++ : $count=0;//Get and increment $count (4=no. bytes to read)
fclose($fp); //Close file

if($data){
$lines=explode("\n",$data);
if($count>count($lines)){$count=0;}//Reset $count if more than available lines
echo $lines[$count];

$fp=fopen('count.txt','w'); //Another fopen to truncate the file simply
fwrite($fp,$count); //Store $count just displayed
fclose($fp); //Close file
}
?>

Upvotes: 1

Quixrick
Quixrick

Reputation: 3200

I think I understand what you are asking, but if not, please let me know and I will adjust.

Basically, what I'm doing here is counting the number of lines in the array that you exploded and then using that as a max number to randomize against. Once I have a random number, then I just access that line of the file array. So if I generate the number 5, then it will grab the 5th line from the array.

$lines = explode("\n", $data);
$line_count = count($lines) - 1;

for ($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) {
    print "<p>".$lines[get_random_line($line_count)]."</p>";
}


function get_random_line($line_count) {
    mt_srand(microtime() * 1000000);
    $random_number = rand(0, $line_count);
    return $random_number;
}

Upvotes: 1

Minhaz
Minhaz

Reputation: 446

Try This

$str = '<p>This is a line of text <a href="http://domain1.com">domain 1</a>. This is a line of text.</p><p>This is a line of text <a href="http://domain2.com">domain 2</a>. This is a line of text.</p><p>This is a line of text <a href="http://domain3.com">domain 3</a>. This is a line of text.</p>';

    preg_match_all('%(<p[^>]*>.*?</p>)%i', $str, $match);

    $count = 0;
    $used = array();
    while ($count < 3) {
        $index = rand(0, 2);
        if (!isset($used[$index])) {
            $used[$index] = 1;
            echo $match[0][$index];
            $count++;
        }
    }

Upvotes: 1

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