Generate random word from the dictionary in php - php

Question

Please take a look at this link: Random entry from dictionary
That example is C#, however, my question is how to generate a random entry from the dictionary in php?
Does php have an inbuilt function for dictionaries, or will I need an API or something else to do this?

Answer 1

From GitHub, you can download the text file that contains all the dictionary word in each line. The complete guide is here - Get random word from English dictionary in PHP tutorial
Below is the PHP code to choose a line randomly and get the word of that line:
<?php
$file = "words_alpha.txt";
$file_arr = file($file);
$num_lines = count($file_arr);
$last_arr_index = $num_lines - 1;
$rand_index = rand(0, $last_arr_index);
$rand_text = $file_arr[$rand_index];
echo $rand_text;
?>
Source: Get random word from English dictionary in PHP

Answer 2

array_rand might do what you want, if I understand the question correctly.
$array = array(
'key' => 'value',
'key2' => 'value2',
// etc
);
$randomKey = array_rand($array); // get a random key
echo $array[$randomKey]; // get the corresponding value

Answer 3

Just to complete Tom answer, I had similar needs in one of my project, here my class the tricky feature the dictionary is directly embedded in the PHP file.
/**
* Generate bunch of english Lorem Ipsum.
*
*
*
* #category Tool
* #package Tool
* #version
*/
class RandomWord
{
/**
* List of words in the dictionnary
*
* #var array
*/
static private $_words = array();
/**
* Load the dictionary.
*
* This would load the dictionnary embedded in this PHP file
*/
static public function loadDictionnary()
{
$fp = fopen(__FILE__, 'r');
$halted = false;
while (($line = fgets($fp, 4096)) !== false) {
if ($halted == false) {
if (preg_match('/__halt_compiler\(\);/', $line)) {
$halted = true;
}
} else {
list($word, $dummy) = explode("\t", $line);
array_push(self::$_words, $word);
}
}
fclose($fp);
}
/**
* Pickup a random word from the dictionnary
*
* #return string
*/
static public function random()
{
if (!count(self::$_words)) {
self::loadDictionnary();
}
return self::$_words[array_rand(self::$_words)];
}
/**
* Generate a number of paragraph of random workds
*
* #param integer $numberOfWords
* #param integer $paragraph
* #return string
*/
static public function loremIpsum($numberOfWords = 20, $paragraph = 1)
{
$ret = '';
for ($i = 0; $i < $paragraph; $i++) {
for ($v = 0; $v < $numberOfWords; $v++) {
$ret .= self::random() . ' ';
}
if ($paragraph > 1) {
$ret .= "\n";
}
}
$ret = substr($ret, 0, strlen($ret) - 1);
return $ret;
}
}
__halt_compiler();
's gravenhage |h
'tween |v
'tween decks |v
.22 |N
0 |NA
1 |NA
1-dodecanol |N
1-hitter |N
10 |NA
100 |NA
1000 |NA
10000 |N
100000 |N
1000000 |N
1000000000 |N
1000000000000 |N
1000th |A
100th |A
10th |A
11 |NA
11-plus |N