Randomly selecting a row in MySQL

[Guest_imported]

Hello.

I am fairly new at PHP coding, and I'm trying really hard to make a script. There's something I don't know how to do yet.

How do I connect to MySQL and a database? In the table, how do I randomly choose a row, and then fetch the records in a variable format?

Thank you in advance.

 

[KarveR]

Hi, heres a little light reading for you.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-connect.php

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-query.php

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-fetch-array.php

After this you'll need a good understanding of mysql functions to select a random record, but before you can select a random record you need to know how many records are in your database in the first place.

There are some very good step by step tutorials on

http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP

and

http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/MySQL

which can teach you how to setup a database, connect using PHP and insert/update and read records from it.

This should be enough to get you started ______________________________________________________________________
There's no present like the time, they say. - Henry's Cat.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thank you, KarveR.

There are 18 columns in my table, but the rows will vary. I just need to know how to get a random row, then get the record data for that row.

 

[KarveR]

try this then: - you need a column called id that is a unique number.
SELECT @random:=truncate((rand() * your number of rows here),0), field1, field2 etc etc FROM your_table WHERE id = @random;

______________________________________________________________________
There's no present like the time, they say. - Henry's Cat.

 

[welshtroll]

Also if the number of rows is unknown, I tend to get the number of rows by this method:

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $db_table WHERE 1"
$tabcnt = mysql_num_rows($sql);

Then follow KarveR's example, using the $tabcnt to get a random number.

'Does my thumb look big in this?'

elshtroll

 

[KarveR]

Mines not strictly correct, you need to add +1 to the calculation so that you can get the random to go to the highest record in the table too ...
@random:=truncate((rand() * your number of rows here + 1),0), ______________________________________________________________________
There's no present like the time, they say. - Henry's Cat.