How to make at least close to random random on the site?

Question

PHP

There is a task: randomly show one of several blocks when reloading the site pages.
When using standard php tools, only one of the blocks is shown in 99% (there are only 2 of them now).
How to cure?

Answer 1

For such a task, you can do it quite simply:

$blockId = time() % 2; // $blockId = 0 или $blockId = 1

Of course, you should not use such an algorithm for other tasks;)

Answer 2

show the code that you think is random

Answer 3

It can be assumed that the random counter is not “untwisted”. Try inserting before random srand((double)microtime()*1000000)for example.

Answer 4

For some reason, I immediately thought that your output is cached and the same thing is given all the time.

Answer 5

Use a wider range:

Answer 6

I am using this algorithm.
There are several blocks, one of which must be shown in a certain place on the site.
Each block has a weight that affects the probability of a block appearing.
We add up the weight of all blocks, in parallel we form a matrix of correspondence of a random number to a block,
we generate a random number from 0 to the total weight of all blocks minus 1.
Based on the resulting number, we take the block index from the correspondence matrix.
The correspondence matrix is ​​filled at the stage of calculating the total weight of the blocks
, for example, block 1 has a weight of 3, block 2 has a weight of 3, block 3 has a weight of 1, the matrix will look like this.
$m3x = Array(
0 => 1,
1 => 1,
2 => 1,
3 => 2,
4 => 2,
5 => 2,
6 => 3,
);
everything works great.

Answer 7

Thanks a lot.