Question

Hit refresh several times and see sometimes I get “null”.

This script loops through a folder to get all mp3 files and randomly selects one.
What am I doing wrong? Thanks

if ($handle = opendir('../../hope/upload/php/files/')) {

    while (false !== ($entry = readdir($handle))) {

        $entry = trim($entry);
        if(preg_match('/.mp3/', $entry))
        {
        $mp3[] =  "$entry";
        }
    }


    closedir($handle);
    $count = count($mp3);

$rand = rand(0,$count -1); /// FIXED BY adding a -1 after count**
$mp3 = $mp3[$rand];

if($mp3)
     {
     echo "http://MyWebsite.com/hope/upload/php/files/$mp3";
     }
else
     {
    echo "null";
     }
}

Answer 1

This is happening because array indexes go from 0 to length - 1, but your script is generating a random index from 0 to length. The preferred way to fix this would be to use array_rand():

$rand = array_rand($mp3);
$mp3 = $mp3[$rand];