You could also do something like:
select field1, field2 from table order by rand() limit 1;
HTH
Ben
----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip Mak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Alec Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 11:50 PM
Subject: Re: How to structure a random query
> On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Alec Smith wrote:
>
> > I've got a table of X rows, each with a unique ID as determined by
> > auto_increment when the row is inserted into the database. How would I
go
> > about doing a SELECT on a row of the database and have MySQL return a
row
> > at random?
>
> Maybe you can do something with the MySQL RAND() function, which returns a
> random number between 0.0 and 1.0 (so you'd have to normalize it to
> between 1 and MAX(ID)).
>
> You may not be able to use the grouping function that way, though. MySQL
> doesn't seem to let you use grouping functions in the WHERE clause.
>
> mysql> select num from ffml where num=floor(rand()*max(num))+1;
> ERROR 1111: Invalid use of group function
>
> Anyone else have an idea?
>
> -Philip Mak ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>
>
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