Explode Array and Show 4 random items at a time with Shuffle

Question

I am trying to explode an array and then shuffle 4 items at a time so that each array appears in random order.

It half works but on refresh sometimes it shows only 2 or 3 arrays not 4. Is there an easy workaround for it?

Thanks in advance.

$siteswith = $row['siteswith']; 
$array = explode(',', $siteswith);  
shuffle($array);
foreach(array_slice($array, 0, 4) as $item ){

}

Answer 1

It seems that $array does not have enough items that the slice function can "slice" from. Please check if your input string $row['siteswith'] always provide 4 or more comma separated values.

Depending what the code is later used for, you could also use array_rand() to pick n random elements from the list

$siteswith = $row['siteswith']; 
$array = explode(',', $siteswith);  

foreach(array_rand($array, 4) as $item ){
   ...
}

This will also prevent mutating your origin array (other than array_shift will do) which avoids unexpected behaviour.

Please be aware that you'll receive an exception when the array size is smaller than the requested amount of random elements.