How to find what random row from a random table was chosen - php

Question

I'm trying to create a website where users can vote on different items from a game, like a tierlist. I want the item that a user votes on to be from a random table and a random row in that table.
Right now, I have the following code set up to find the random item:
$ran = mt_rand(1, 10);
switch ($ran) {
case "1":$sql = "SELECT item, rating FROM ditems ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
echo $row["gun"];
};
break;
case "2":$sql = "SELECT item, rating FROM citems ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
echo $row["item"];
};
etc
The problem I run into is that I can't access what the chosen item is outside of the switch{} statement because the $row array is declared locally, but I have to be able to do that so that I can seet up a button to vote on the item.
EDIT: I decided to throw all items in a single table and pick a item using
ORDER BY RAND LIMIT 1

Answer 1

You can SELECT another column with a text constant to denote what entity is selected:
$ran = mt_rand(1, 10);
switch ($ran) {
case "1":$sql = "SELECT 'ditem' as entity, item, rating FROM ditems ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
echo $row["gun"];
};
break;
case "2":$sql = "SELECT 'citem' as entity, item, rating FROM citems ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
echo $row["item"];
};
etc