Disadvantage of Pete's is that if it's an auto-increment it will continue from the old maximum value, not from the next available one.

If you had records:

10 Hello,
11 World

And you used Pete's code to change them to:

1 Hello
2 World

The next value you insert into the table will have the UID of 11 and not 3.

I noticed in PHPMyAdmin that you can reset the auto-increment counter, would taht solve that? Or would it make things start at 0 again :S

Depends if you can reset it or change it to a specific value.

It's change, not reset. I've changed it to 1 after the current last entry, hopefully that's it sorted.

Anyone want to help me with this? And by help, i mean tell me exactly what to type :$

 

I have a table with around 100 entries, each one is a vetted customer testimonial type thing and the data isn't likely to change/grow much.

 

What I need is:

 

Select 6 of them at random, then they'll be displayed at various points on a page.

 

I've got an SQL query working for it (I know it's not the most efficient/fastest way of doing it, but it seemed the most straightforward way to get 6 unique random rows):

 

SELECT text FROM `content` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,6

 

Now how do i get that into an array so I can print each row result individually? All the stuff online seems to be about finding individual rows and adding them to an array, not finding 6 rows and adding each row to an array.

 

Or should I bite the bullet and learn some PHP so I can do it myself? Just sees like a waste as I'm unlikely to ever need it again after this :$

Learn some PHP - you would have also said you're unlikely to ever need it before finding out about this, right?

If "all the stuff online" is telling you how to deal with single rows, then you're not looking at all the stuff (or are misunderstanding it, thus learning a bit would be beneficial).

In any case, Stack Overflow has this question asked/answered several times. Like here.

But why learn when I can get you to find the answer for me?! (kiss)

Your solution doesn't work :(

You must be doing it wrong.

$query = mysql_query("SELECT text FROM `content` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,6");
$hooray = array();
while($result = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
    $hooray[] = $result;
}
 
print_r($hooray);

(last line just prints the array)

Ah-hah. The problem is with how I'm trying to print the array elements.

 

If I use "print" it just outputs "Array". print_r prints the content, but does it like this:

 

Array ( [0] => The service was excellent. [text] => The service was excellent. )

 

How on earth do i just get the bit of text I need out of it?! This shit was so easy in QBASIC :(

(just a note: that will result in an array of arrays. i.e. $hooray will be an array containing arrays containing the result elements. So the first element of the first result will be at $hooray[0][0], second element of the first result at $hooray[0][1] and first element of the second result at $hooray[1][0] and so on)

It's not my solution, but it works perfectly.

As above. I think fetch_array produces both an indexed and an associative array (or one which acts as both, I dunno (and they might not be the right words)).

So you can do either:

$hooray[0]['text'] or $hooray[0][0]

They will point to the same thing.

Tis, cos you made me look at it. But you failed to adjust it to fit my exact requirements.

(hug)

 

Thank you! That was the vital bit of information that I couldn't be bothered getting my huge, and severely out of date, PHP book down off the shelf for (kiss)

If you're simply taking 6 results with one field each then it's just $array[0][0] to $array[5][0]

You didn't hire me to fit it to your exact requirements.

Yay, it's all working now, I think I can forget about it now.

 

Pete: It was implied.

(cheer)