Question

I’m a fairly newbie php coder, got this php code in a tutorial to create a randomly generated quote, but I don’t fully understand the code

IN particular, I don’t understand

a) line 4 — where does the “rows” come from. Is that a name made up on the spot. Could it just as easily have been called “ferrari”

b) line 9 — where does “storedtext” come from? is it just made up on the spot?

c) based on the code, do you have an idea what the database is supposed to look like. Would it just be a database called “text” with a table called “quotables” in it?

    <?  
    // 
    // count() gets the number of rows from database text-- 
    //it assigns a number to rowcount
 1   $rowcount = mysql_query("select count() as rows from text");

    // don't understand what exactly is happening here, where did "rows" come from
 2  while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rowcount))
 3   {
 4       $max = $row["rows"];
 5   }

    // Selects an item's index at random    
 6   $rand = rand(1,$max)-1;
    //there is a database table called "quotables?" taking one random row
 7   $result = mysql_query("select from quotables limit $rand, 1");

 8   $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
//where does "storedText" come from?????
 9   $randomOutput = $row['storedText'];

 10   echo '<p>' . $randomOutput . '</p>';
 11   ?>

Answer 1

A) rows is the alias given to the count() function in the mysql query in line 1. If you changed rows in line one to ferrari then changed rows in line 4 to ferrari then it would still work.

B) stored text comes from the second mysql query on line 7. This will be the name of a column from within that table.

C) Based on the code you have given I can tell you that you have a database which I do not know the name of and that database has two tables one called text and the other quotables I can tell you that quotables has one column called storedText.