h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Use PHP to get a random background colour for a website - A891506
Author: R'win - U209791

A tutorial for creating a fairly simple PHP script for a random background colour on a website.
Both of the final scripts should work, as long as the server understands PHP

The content of this entry is not something I have a great deal of knowledge of, but the writing and layout look excellent

Thanks
I tried the two final scripts and they both work. (I actually made the first script earlier this year for one of my websites, and the second was an idea I had when I decided to write the entry.)

It might be worth mentioning that not all web-host support server side scripting.

oops, first para don't know how I missed that

while I don't see anything particularly wrong with the article, I can't actually see any good reason why you would want to serve up random background colours.

it might make a good php tutorial (but I don't know the language well enough to tell if it does), but it does seem rather a pointless thing to do.

considering just about all of the external links are to the php website, wouldn't it be better to try and get the tutorial added there?

True, you might not want to serve up random background colours, but the same scripts could be used for random colouring of *any* html entity, if you so wanted.

Nice entry, well done! You might want to mention about not all servers using PHP in the last para as well, as a disadvantage, at the moment it is a very one sided comparision.

Tango

Maybe I'm being pedantic here, but for example 2b, wouldn't it make more sense to put all the colour values in an array to start off with, rather than assigning them to individual variables and then stuffing them in the array.

For example:

<?php

$colours = array( 1 =>
"#ffffff",
"#ffff99",
"#00ccff",
"#66ff99",
"#ffcc00",
"#d7ebff",
"#ccffcc");

$max = count($colours);

$number= rand(1,$max);

$bgcolour = $colours[$number];

echo ("");

?>

(Btw in your 2b, $bgcolour still uses the 2a-style $cN assignment. I'm guessing this was just a typo!)

It wasn't a typo, and it works, but now that you mention it the array could have been used a bit more than it was.
Still it does what it's supposed to...

It can actually be used to do random *anything* not just colours, it would just need a little editing...

Tango, good point. I'll add that as a disadvantage

Ok .. but if it wasn't a typo, then there is absolutely no point in having the array there. It adds confusion.

You've written a nice introduction to showing people how to integrate PHP into a webpage - but I really think you should tidy the code up a bit.

The array is used to find the number of colours for the upper limit of rand(). Had I thought at the time I could have used the array to find a random entry in it, but I don't see anything wrong with how it is at the moment

It's still a waste of an array - after the while loop has terminated, the upper limit is ($n-1)

Although you say that the entry assumed the reader knows something about PHP already, I really think your first paragraph should have at least a sentence or two explaining what PHP is, what the letters stand for, etc.

Good point.
I've quoted such a passage from http://www.php.net

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Took some time, but well done!