From file to array php

The file() function separates the array by newline, so the | separator is unused and has to be trimmed:

$vid_list = file('youtube_vids.txt');
shuffle($vid_list);
for ($i = 0; $i < 4; $i++) {
    // Trim any newline characters
    $url = trim($vid_list[$i]);
    // Then trim the 'separator'
    $url = trim($url, '|');
    echo $url . "<br/>";
}

The solution is:

• First read the entire file into an array using file()
• Then select 4 random line numbers using array_rand()
• And finally explode() and extract URLs from the array

So your code should be like this:

$lines = file('youtube_vids.txt');
$rand_array = array_rand($lines, 4);

$random_urls = array();
foreach ($rand_array as $line) {
    $random_urls[] = explode("|",$lines[$line])[0];
}

// display $random_urls array
echo "<pre>";
print_r($random_urls);
echo "</pre>";

$filename = "file.txt"; //Input Text File With Separators

if(file_exists($filename)) { //Check if file exists

    $myfile = fopen($filename, "r") or die("Unable to open file!"); //Reading file

    $fileData = fread($myfile,filesize($filename)); //Save file data in a variable

    $splitData = explode("|", $fileData); //Split file data using separators

    $randLinks = array_rand($splitData, 4); // Get 4 random indices from splitData array

   foreach($randLinks as $randLink) { // Foreach index
        echo $splitData[$randLink] . "<br>"; // Get url
    }

   fclose($myfile); //Don`t forget to close the file 
}