Outputting a random record from csv? - php

Question

I have a csv file that contains 6 columns. I want to return one record (not the whole row) at random into my web page. For example, from row 5 return column 1 and 4.
The code below returns the whole file (columns 1, 2, 3). I only want one row returned. How do I modify this code to bring back one record?
<?PHP
$csvfile = "table.csv";
$file_handle = fopen($csvfile, "r");
while (!feof($file_handle) ) {
$line_of_text = fgetcsv($file_handle, 1024);
print $line_of_text[0] . $line_of_text[1]. $line_of_text[2] . "<BR>";
}
fclose($file_handle);
?>

Answer 1

Using your code above this is how you could potentially modify it to show a particular row and column. As #Dagon mentioned in his post you could use array_rand for random entries (see below). You could also specify the row and column positions in an array if you like.
<?php
$csvfile = "table.csv";
$file_handle = fopen($csvfile, "r");
$line_of_text = array();
while (!feof($file_handle) ) {
$line_of_text[] = fgetcsv($file_handle, 1024);
}
fclose($file_handle);
// Random Row and Column
$random_row = array_rand($line_of_text);
$random_column = array_rand($line_of_text[$random_row]);
echo $line_of_text[$random_row][$random_column];
//Specified Row 5 Column 1
$row = 5;
$column = 1;
echo $line_of_text[$row-1][$column-1];
?>

Answer 2

inefficient, however you could change print to
$p[]= ...
then after the loop
echo $p[array_rand($p)];