Question

My aim is to create a sentence consisting of three random words which are to be taken from the columns of a CSV file.

I am having troubles with making PHP choose the words only from the correct columns, hence column one contains the words to be first in the sentence, column two only middle words and column three only last words.

Example of the CSV file:

my;horse;runs
your;chicken;sits
our;dog;barks

Example of the output:

My chicken barks. *reload*
Your horse sits. *reload*
Our dog runs.

My effort so far:

<?php
$file = fopen('input.csv', 'r');
while (($line = fgetcsv($file, 1000, ";")) !== FALSE) {
  $x = array_rand($line);
  echo $line[$x] . "\n";
}
?>

Thanks in advance and forgive the strong noobness with this one, please.

Answer 1

I would sort the columns into separate arrays then select a random index.

<?php
    $file = fopen('input.csv', 'r');
    while (($line = fgetcsv($file, 1000, ";")) !== FALSE) {
        $column1[] = $line[0];
        $column2[] = $line[1];
        $column3[] = $line[2];
    }

    function pickWord($wordArray){
          $x = array_rand($wordArray);
          echo $wordArray[$x] . "\n";
    }

    pickWord($column1);
    pickWord($column2);
    pickWord($column3);
 ?> 

Something like that