DelphiFAQ Home Search:
Databases
    InterBase (28)
    MS-SQL (5)
    mysql (33)
    Oracle (1)

 
Exchange Links
 
About this site

Links to us

Tell a friend
Friend's name
Friend's email
My name
My email
Short note
 
Bookmark this
Add to del.icio.us Digg! Add to Reddit Add to Yahoo MyWeb Add to Windows Live Add to Google Bookmarks Share via Facebook

How to pick a random record from a mysql table

 

comments1 comments. Current rating: 4 stars (1 votes). Leave comments and/ or rate it.

Question:

I have a huge table in mysql with suitable passwords and want to pick a word from this table. If I use a simple select statement, I always get the first word.
How can I pick a random record from a mysql table (or result set, in general)?

Answer:

Use the order by RAND() phrase, and for performance reasons, combine it with LIMIT 1 as shown in the example below.

There was a bug in older mysql versions (prior to version 4) where this RAND() phrase did not really lead to truely random results but always to the same rows after a connection was started.

This has been resolved with version 4.

select word from wordlist ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

Comments:

2007-11-19, 00:28:46
anonymous from Philippines  
rating
Great! Thanks a bunch!=)

 

 

Email address (not necessary):

Rate as 		Hide my email when showing my comment.
Please notify me once a day about new comments on this topic.
Please provide a valid email address if you select this option.
 
It seems that you are
from Washington, US .

Info/ Feedback on this

Show city and country
Show country only
Hide my location
Leave your comment here:
Please type in the code:
photo Add a picture:

Please do not post inappropriate pictures. Inappropriate pictures include pictures of minors and nudity. The owner of this web site reserves the right to delete such material.