Question

After staring at these lines of code, and researching for hours on multiple coding forums, I am stuck with the code I have, which does not fully function. I am trying to successfully run this PHP script, so that a text quote can be queried randomly from a MySQL table and displayed in the footer of my website. The quote should change every time a user refreshes the Website. I am also trying to keep a count of how many times each quote is displayed, and then when a particular quote displays on my Website, a counter tell the site user how many times that particular quote has been displayed. My code thus far is:

    <?php

    include('Includes/inc_connect.php');
    $DBName = 'database';
    if (!@mysql_select_db($DBName, $DBConnect))
        echo "<p style='text-align:center'>There are no quotes to view!</p>";
    else {
        $TableName = "randomquote";
        $SQLstring = "SELECT quote FROM $TableName";
                    //executes the query
        $QueryResult = @mysql_query($SQLstring, $DBConnect);
            if ($QueryResult === false)
            {
                echo "<p>Unable to retrieve the data.</p>" . "<p>Error code: " . mysql_errno($DBConnect) . ": " . mysql_error($DBConnect) . "</p>";
            }
            else
            {
                $quote_array = array();//Creates a blank array
    //use a while loop to extract the data from the database table into an indexed array
                while(($Row = mysql_fetch_row($QueryResult)) !== FALSE)
                {
                    $quote_array = $Row[0];
                }
            }

    //assign the contents of the table to an array variable
            $quote_count=count($quote_array);
            $RandomArrayIndex = rand(0, $quote_count-1);
            $quote = stripslashes($quote_array[$RandomArrayIndex]);
                $SQLString = "UPDATE randomquote SET display_count " . " = display_count + 1 WHERE quote = " . $quote_array[$quote];

                $SQLString = "SELECT display_count from randomquote WHERE quote = " . $quote_array[$quote];
                $display_count = @mysql_query($SQLString, $DBConnect);
    //display the random quote on the Web page
                echo "<p style='text-align:center;font-style:italic'><strong>" . $quote . "</strong></p>\n";
                echo "<p style='text-align:center>This quote has displayed " . $display_count . " times.</p>/n";
    }
        else
        {
    //specify that the comments cannot be read
        echo "<p>The quote cannot be displayed at this time</p>\n";
        }
else
{
//specify that there are no quotes
echo "<p>There are no quotes to display.</p>\n";
}

I am a student of both PHP and MySQL, so any and all help and advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

Answer 1

I believe this may help:

change

$SQLstring = "SELECT quote FROM $TableName";

to

$SQLstring = "SELECT quote FROM $TableName ORDER BY RAND()";

or if you only want one quote at a time

$SQLstring = "SELECT quote FROM $TableName ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";

I am assuming here that your updating of the display count is working ok.

You could then drop the random array part of your code.