php add random array not repeating most recent 5 - php

Question

I'm trying to re-write this code so that it goes with the columns that are going to be user-defined. With this, my challenge consists of
a) Needs to select random starting item from array
b) Select the next random color from the original array that is not equivalent to the most recent items selected based the number: $intNotesColumn + 1
I was thinking a do-while statement nested inside another was appropriate for this but am unsure how to go about this. Here is my code so far:
$metroUIcolors = array( "#A30061", "#8200CC", "008987", "#A05000", "#B85A93", "#C07807", "#E51400", "#297A29" );
$metroUIcolorsLength = count($metroUIcolors);
$intNotesColumn = 3; // This will be user-defined later
// Now I query the SQL database to get my base-code
if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
// output data of each row
echo '<table border=0 valign=top>'
. '<tr>'
. '<td colspan=' . $intNotesColumn . '>' . '<h1>header</h1>' . '</td>'
. '</tr>'
. '<tr>';
$counterRank = 1;
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
echo "<td bgcolor=" . $metroUIcolors[rand(0, $metroUIcolorsLength - 1)]. ">"
. "<h2>" . $row["username"] . '</h2><br />'
. "<p class='notes'>" . $row["notes"] . "</p>"
. "<p class='footnotes'>"
. "<br />Last Reset: " . $row["lastReset"]
. '<br />Last Update: ' . $row['lastUpdate']
. '<br />SessionID: ' . $row["sessionID"]
. "<br />Counter = " . $counterRank . "</td>". '</p>';
if ($counterRank % $intNotesColumn == 0)
{
echo '</tr><tr>';
}
$counterRank++;
}
echo '</tr></table>';
} else{
echo "No Notes Found in databases";
}

Answer 1

Then, why don't you do it order picking one color at a time. You could use shuffle() so that there will be a different starting color everytime.
<?php
$counterRank = 1;
// shuffle the array
shuffle($metroUIcolors);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
$rand_color = $counterRank % $metroUIcolorsLength;
echo "<td bgcolor=" . $metroUIcolors[$rand_color]. ">";
// everything else
$counterRank++;
}
?>
If you insist on doing the way you said, you may create an array $colorCount which has color codes as keys and count as values.
<?php
$counterRank = 1;
$colorCount = array_fill_keys($metroUIcolors, 0);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
do {
$rand_color = $metroUIcolors[rand(0, $metroUIcolorsLength - 1)];
} while ($colorCount[$rand_color] > 5);
echo "<td bgcolor=" . $rand_color. ">";
// everything else
$counterRank++;
$colorCount[$rand_color] += 1;
}
?>