Image/Advert rotator, need a little help

Hi, I've been using a simple method to rotate my adverts on my site, but want to upgrade it so I can display more than one advert without the risk of showing the same advert/image twice.

Here's what I have been using:

<?php  $rnd = rand(1, 10);
$filename = "ads" . $rnd;
   

    include ("basic/$filename.php");
     ?>

PHP:

Where a file called ads(No.).php would contain the html/javascript etc.
But if I repeated the code twice I would run the risk of showing the same advert again. Ideally I want to show 3 and would rather not use MySql.

Cheers,
Martyn

 

You could try this
<?php
$rnd = rand(1, 10);
$track_array[]=$rnd;
$counter=0;

while ($counter <=3)
{
if (!in_array($rnd,$track_array)
{
include ("basic/$filename.php");
$counter++;
$track_array[]=$rnd;
}
$rnd = rand(1, 10);
}
?>

 

Use sessions to track which ads have been served to each client.
Rob, i think he is talking about seperate page loads, so the counter wouldn't work.

 

What Rob put is what I'm after, one problem, it doesn't want to work. Unexpected "{" comes up?

 

Sorry missing a closing ) in the if

make it this :
if (!in_array($rnd,$track_array))



basically it will allow 3 unique files on 1 page load.

but like matthew said separate page loads will require sessions.

 

Another simplistic approach is to use microtime() and get the modulus (a % b) with the number of ads.

 

Thanks Rob that solves the problem and looks good. I think I will leave separate page loads to the future.
Cheers,
Martyn