Question

I want a web page to display several random images on load. I’ve thought of several solutions but I would really like to be able to dump images into a folder without renaming them, and the web page will choose from those images in the folder and display them

I can imagine a PHP solution that will display random images from a folder, but it will need to look for certain names.

So my next step was to have an SQL database where every image got a key, and 10 keys would be chosen random by a query – the images associated with them would then be passed into an array that the document will load the elements of.

But now I guess I need to know how to automatically populate an SQL database by having it read a folder?

Insight appreciated, if I don’t have to reinvent the wheel the better

Answer 1

Glob works like on the filesystem, e.g. supports wildcards

$files = glob('/path/to/files/*.jpg');
$yourRandomFile = array_rand($files);

This will return a random JPG file, based on it’s extension.