Randomizing miltidimentional array - php

Question

I have a 2-dimentional array with 30+ item nodes in the following format.
$catalog= array(
array(
code => "ABC",
name => "Item name",
link => "domain.com/item121"
),
array(
code => "DEF",
name => "Another item name",
link => "domainB.com/item333"
)
);
I need to do the following:
Randomize the array
Display the first 5 items in a row
Display the rest inside another container 5 items per row.
I only want to show complete rows of 5 and no partials. So I count the total items:
$items= count($catalog);
Then I count how many to display to have complete rows of 5:
$showItems = floor($logosN / 5) * 5; // num or rows * cnt per row
I am not sure how to do the rest. I am able to output the items without randomizing
echo '<div class="first5">';
// 5 first items here
echo '</div>';
echo '<div class="restItems">';
// rest items need to go here
for ($x = 0; $x <= $showItems - 1; $x++) {
echo '
<div class="item">
<div class="item_'.$catalog[$x][code].'"></div>
</div>';
}
echo '</div>';
Need some help here. Thanks.

Answer 1

I had a look at the examples posted by the users on the PHP documentation for shuffle and found this function, which if I understand your question correctly does what you want:
Reference: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.shuffle.php#93214
<?php
function twodshuffle($array)
{
// Get array length
$count = count($array);
// Create a range of indicies
$indi = range(0,$count-1);
// Randomize indicies array
shuffle($indi);
// Initialize new array
$newarray = array($count);
// Holds current index
$i = 0;
// Shuffle multidimensional array
foreach ($indi as $index)
{
$newarray[$i] = $array[$index];
$i++;
}
return $newarray;
}
?>
Please note it only works on two dimensional arrays.
Also, note that it will not shuffle the actual inner array elements, but only shuffle the outer array, if you know what I mean, and if I know what you want ;)