Extract Random Element from Associate Array in JSON Dictionary Using PHP

Question

I have some JSON that looks like this:

$str = '{"movies":[{"id":"11007","title":"The Pink Panther"},{"id":"11118","Breathless"]}';

This would appear to be a dictionary {} with key "movies" and value an array [] of items that are movies.

After decoding it into an associative array with:

$array = json_decode($str, true);

It looks like:

Array ( [movies] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [id] => 11007 [title] => The Pink Panther) [1] => Array ( [id] => 11118 [title] => Breathless) ) )

How can I get a random movie eg The Pink Panther and access its title and id?

array['movies'] just seems to give me the array itself and array_rand($array) also just gives me back the index of the same array since there is only one.

How do I get into the array of movies so that I can grab a random one?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Progrock · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-28 23:02:18Z

2

Grab a random index of the array you want, and then assign. (Json correction here)

<?php

$json =
'{
    "movies":
        [
            {"id":"11007","title":"The Pink Panther"},
            {"id":"11118","title":"Breathless"}
        ]
}';
$data = json_decode($json, true);
$rand_idx = array_rand($data['movies']);
$random_movie = $data['movies'][$rand_idx];

var_export($random_movie);

Example output:

array (
  'id' => '11118',
  'title' => 'Breathless',
)

answered Jun 28, 2020 at 23:02

Progrock

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1 Comment

user6631314 Over a year ago

Thank-you. You saved the day.

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