Random Records

[ciaran]

I need to display 4 records randomly from my database everytime the page is refreshed. Has anybody any ideas of how to go about this?

Thanks

[TTT]

this might not be the best solution 🙂

$q =select id from table
$idArray = Array();
$index = 0;
while(odbc_fect_row($q))
{
$idArray[$index] = odbc_result($q,1);
$index.++;
}
$list = "";
for($i=0;$i < 4;$i++)
{
$foo = rand(0,count($idArray));
$list = $list.$idArray[$foo],;
}

$q2 = select * from table where id IN (substr($list,0,strlen($list)-1)) // -1 removes last comma
....

[dannys]

I'm sure this thread has been posted before, but:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,4

Will do what you want.

[dannys]

That's assuming a MySQL db btw. For PGSQL queries use LIMIT 4,0 instead.

I'm not sure which other dbs support the LIMIT function.