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Apr 29th, 2005

Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

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Hi all,

I have quite a few testimonials I would like to rotate. Each testimonial is just a block of text. As it stands, all are displayed on every page. I want only one to be displayed.

Currently:
I have about 20 pages that all have an include of "testimonials.php". Within this file, is all of the testimonials, in basic HTML.

The goal:
I would like to, in PHP, display a random testimonial on each page. I'd prefer to keep all content within testimonials.php.

The thought:
From my limited PHP experience, I was thinking I could assign each testimonial a $variable. ($test1="I love you...") and then randomly display each variable somehow. Possibly assign each variable a number, and use rand() to call up a random number.

Any thoughts / help?

Thanks,
Danny

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Danny

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Apr 30th, 2005

Re: Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

Put each testimonial into an array eg

PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
<?PHP
$testimonials = array();
$testimonials[] = 'I love you';
$testimonials[] = 'You did a great job';
$testimonials[] = 'You did an ok job';
$testimonials[] = 'I would hire you again';
//then get the random number
$rand = rand(0, count($testimonials));
// and echo out the corresponding testimonial
echo $testimonials[$rand];
?>
<?PHP
$testimonials = array();
$testimonials[] = 'I love you';
$testimonials[] = 'You did a great job';
$testimonials[] = 'You did an ok job';
$testimonials[] = 'I would hire you again';
//then get the random number
$rand = rand(0, count($testimonials));
// and echo out the corresponding testimonial
echo $testimonials[$rand];
?>

Ref: http://www.php.net/rand

If you decide to store the testimonials text in a MySQL database the method of getting the random row is totally different so let us know if you decide to go down that path.

Sarah

sarahk

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Apr 30th, 2005

Re: Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

depending how how big your testimonials are, you could store them as variables and use a switch function .

[PHP]
$var = rand(1,5);
switch($var) {
case 1: echo 'Testimonial 1...'; break;
case 2: echo 'Testimonial 2...'; break;
case 3: echo 'Testimonial 3...'; break;
case 4: echo 'Testimonial 4...'; break;
case 5: echo 'Testimonial 5...'; break;
}
[/PHP]

robbyd

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Apr 30th, 2005

Re: Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

Thanks for the replies. My testimonials are small paragraphs. (3 or four sentences)

Will the array method mentioned still work? Or is there a size limit?

If I did go with robbyd's code due to the size of the testimonials, would I simply echo $var?

Danny

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Apr 30th, 2005

Re: Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

Actually you would echo the text that you wanted to display

[PHP]
$var = rand(1,3);
switch($var) {
case 1: echo 'It was very good service'; break;
case 2: echo 'I loved it'; break;
case 3: echo 'Everything was great'; break;
}
[/PHP]

Or if the testitmonials are larger you could put each into a text file and include them...

[PHP]
$var = rand(1,3);
switch($var) {
case 1: include('testimonial1.txt'); break;
case 2: include('testimonial2.txt'); break;
case 3: include('testimonial3.txt'); break;
}
[/PHP]

robbyd

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Apr 30th, 2005

Re: Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

Ah it makes sense. I'm going to try these two solutions out and see how well they work.

Thanks so much for all of your help.

Danny

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May 1st, 2005

Re: Roating testimonials (text) in PHP

Well I ended up going with the array. The only problem is, every 4-5 times it displays nothing (its just blank)

Is there a reason for this?

Thanks

Danny

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