Get 3 Items per day from array with a cron job

i have a small PHP Cron Job that runs every day get a file from an API and save it to a static file.

file_put_contents("api.json", fopen("http://example.com/api", 'r'));

The content of this JSON looks like that:

{ 
  recipes: [
  {
    id: 30476,
    title: "Selfmade Chicken Nuggets",
    ...
  }, 
  {...} ] 
}

My issue: I would like to create a "recipes of the day" logic.

Therefore i would like to create an extra array with recipes per day.

In best case i would like to have something like this:

Step 1:: Create a "remaining recipes array" that contains all recipes

Step 2:: Get 3 recipes per day from the remaining recipes array and put them in some kind of "recipes of the day"-array

Step 3:: If the remaining recipes array is empty or dont have 3 elements, refill it from recipes

I already have that logic in my Javascript client:

let fullRecipeList = await this.appData.getRecipeList();
let recipesOfTheDay = await this.appData.getItem("recipesOfTheDay");
let recipesOfTheDayValidUntil = await this.appData.getItem(
  "recipesOfTheDayValidUntil"
);
let remainingRecipes = await this.appData.getItem("remainingRecipes");

if (!remainingRecipes || remainingRecipes.length < 3) {
  remainingRecipes = this.shuffleArray(fullRecipeList);
}

if (
  recipesOfTheDay &&
  moment(recipesOfTheDayValidUntil).isSame(new Date(), "day")
) {
  this.recipeList = recipesOfTheDay;
} else {
  recipesOfTheDay = remainingRecipes.splice(0, 3);
  this.recipeList = recipesOfTheDay;
  await this.appData.setItem("remainingRecipes", remainingRecipes);
  await this.appData.setItem("recipesOfTheDay", recipesOfTheDay);
  await this.appData.setItem(
    "recipesOfTheDayValidUntil",
    moment().startOf("day")
  );
}

Is it possible to create that kind of logic in my server side cron job?

How would the code look like? Iam quite new to the whole php world :)

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