Question

I have a switch function I want to be able to randomly pull cases from:

<?php
    function peopleGet($name) {
        switch ($name) { 

            case 'gloria': 
            echo 'gloria';
            break;

            case 'benjamin': 
            echo 'benjamin';
            break;

            case 'callum': 
            echo 'callum';
            break;
        }
    }
?>

I still need to be able to pull specific variables:

<?php peopleGet('gloria'); ?>

However, is it possible to use the same function to be able to pull random (no-repeating) cases?

Answer 1

The answer is no (And really you shouldn’t) because the switch case statement is a control structure not a data structure, you would be better of having an array of values instead, plus instead of retuning a single value you can return multiple values

Something like:

<?php 
function peopleGet($name=null){
    $people = array('gloria'=>array('name'=>'Gloria',
                                    'age'=>'29',
                                    'location'=>'usa'),
                  'benjamin'=>array('name'=>'Benjamin',
                                    'age'=>'39',
                                    'location'=>'uk'),
                    'callum'=>array('name'=>'Callum',
                                    'age'=>'19',
                                    'location'=>'uk'));

    if($name==null){
        $keys = array_keys($people);
        shuffle($keys);
        return $people[$keys[mt_rand(0,count($people)-1)]];
    }else{
        return $names[$name];
    }                         
}
print_r(peopleGet());//random
print_r(peopleGet('gloria'));//gloria's array
?>