SecretSantaRandomGenerator.php

<?php
/*
 DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
                    Version 2, December 2004 

 Copyright (C) 2014 Bogomil Shopov <[email protected]> 

 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified 
 copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long 
 as the name is changed. 

            DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
   TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 

  0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.
*/

//Keep the result here
$res = array( );

//Add all participants in this array. Add as many as you need.
$arr = array( 'John','Jane','George','Adolf','Ronnie','Igor','Peter' );


//  retrieve the first element and save it
$first = $ele1 = array_shift( $arr );

while( count( $arr ) ) {
    // get a random element
    $ele2 = array_rand( $arr );
    // associate elements
    $res[ $ele1 ] = $arr[ $ele2 ];
    // random element becomes next element
    $ele1 = $arr[ $ele2 ];
    // delete the random element
    array_splice( $arr, $ele2, 1 );
}
// associate last element with the first one
$res[ $ele1 ] = $first;


//display the assignments. Have Fun!
foreach ( $res as $key => $value ) {
	echo $res[ $key ] ." gives a present to ". $res[ $value ]."<br/>";
}

/*Alternatively you can add e-mail address to the names and a simple mail()
 function to send the result to every participant.
 
 Read more about Secret Santa here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Santa
 
 Happy Holidays!
 */
?>

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