reproducible random number series

Question

How can i get a series of reproducible pseudorandom numbers in PHP?

In older versions of PHP i could do that just by using the same seed in the RNG, but it does not work

Answer 1

This is not best one but it is a work one

function ranseed($min, $max, $seed) {
    return round($min + (hexdec(md5($seed)) / hexdec("FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF")) * ($max - $min));
}

Answer 2

The Mersenne Twist is a nice fast PRNG and here's a public domain PHP implementation for it:

http://kingfisher.nfshost.com/sw/twister/

That only works on PHP 5.3.0 and above.

Answer 3

One of the best random number algorithms by some metrics is Mersenne Twister. You can find a pure PHP version here (there are others).

You can then call:

init_with_integer($integer_seed)

and get the same output (for a given seed) every time.