Generating random numbers in php
<p>I'm trying to generate select names from a mysql database by using the rand() function in php. The program works fine but is it possible to make the results more random because some of the records that I'm getting is the same(whenever I clear the session and start over again), and others might not get selected. I have currently 91 records in the table.</p>

<pre><code>if(!isset($_SESSION['max'])){
    $max = $db-&gt;get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tbl_participants");
    $_SESSION['max'] = $max;

}else{
    $max = $_SESSION['max'];
}

if(!empty($_GET['clear'])){
    $_SESSION['used_up'] = Array();
    $_SESSION['names'] = Array();
}
//print_r($_SESSION['used_up']);


$current_number = rand(0, $max);

$exists = check_existing($current_number, $_SESSION['used_up']);
if($exists == 2){
    $_SESSION['used_up'][] = (int)$current_number;
    $name = $db-&gt;get_var("SELECT participant FROM tbl_participants WHERE participant_id='$current_number'");
    $_SESSION['names'][] = $name;

    foreach($_SESSION['names'] as $k=&gt;$v){
        echo '&lt;li&gt;'.$v.'&lt;/li&gt;';
    }
}

function check_existing($item, $array){
    if(in_array($item, $array)){
        return 1;
    }else{
        return 2;
    }
}
</code></pre>
