Question

This is a follow-up question from here.

The code is working great, it randoms the link to a blog post. The downside is that I may fall into the same post twice or too often.

header("Location: ".$posts[array_rand ($posts)][1]);

I need it to not fall on the same post more than once every 20 minutes, if runs out of posts then say: “Out of options. Come back in 20 minutes.”. I tried doing it with cookies like so:

$rlink = $posts[array_rand ($posts)][1];

setcookie("rlink", "$rlink", time()+1200);

if ($rlink == $_COOKIE["rlink"]) {
  header('Location: http://localhost/randommyblog.php');   
} else
{
header("Location: ".$rlink);
}

It might be obvious that the problem here is that I’m replacing the cookie “rlink” every time, rendering the previous one useless.

Little help, please?

Answer 1

Try something like this, worked when I tested it as is:

$posts = array("hello", "world", "it's", "me" ); 

$len_posts = count( $posts );

$set_indices = @$_COOKIE['rlink']; 

$rand = mt_rand( 0, $len_posts - 1 ); //Select a random index from the post

if( !empty( $set_indices ) )
{
    $set_indices = array_map( "intval", explode( ",", $set_indices ) );
    $len_indices = count( $set_indices );


    if( $len_indices >= $len_posts )
    {
        die("no posts for you");
    }
    else
    {
        while( in_array( $rand, $set_indices, TRUE ) ) //Calculate a new index that has not been shown.
        {
            $rand = mt_rand( 0, $len_posts - 1 );
        }


    }
}
else
{
    $set_indices = array();
}

array_push( $set_indices, $rand );

setcookie( "rlink", implode( ",", $set_indices ), time()+1200 ); //Set cookie of the shown indices like "3,0,1" for example.

echo $posts[$rand];