Generating random results by weight in PHP?

Question

I know how to generate a random number in PHP but lets say I want a random number between 1-10 but I want more 3,4,5\'s then 8,9,10\'s. How is this possible? I would post wh

Answer 1

You can use weightedChoice from Non-standard PHP library. It accepts a list of pairs (item, weight) to have the possibility to work with items that can't be array keys. You can use pairs function to convert array(item => weight) to the needed format.

use function \nspl\a\pairs;
use function \nspl\rnd\weightedChoice;

$weights = pairs(array(
    1 => 10,
    2 => 15,
    3 => 15,
    4 => 15,
    5 => 15,
    6 => 10,
    7 => 5,
    8 => 5,
    9 => 5,
    10 => 5
));

$number = weightedChoice($weights);

In this example, 2-5 will appear 3 times more often than 7-10.