PHP code to fetch random data from database with link - php

Question

I have a project from my college. I need to make a site which will generate random data from database. But it will also need to generate a link. So that people can copy that link (as the website is generating different data, people can see the data they want by copying the URL).
I was thinking to use RAND(). But after joining stackoverlow, I see that RAND() is not a good way.
I can fetch random data using RAND() but it is not making any URL. Which is another problem too. I post this problem before. I think I shouldn't use the RAND() function.
this is the code I'm using at this moment:
<!--PHP code for fetching data from database-->
<?php
$con = mysql_connect("localhost","root","");
if (!$con){
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db("xlsx_db", $con);
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM sheet1 ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");
if (!$result) {
echo 'Could not run query: ' . mysql_error();
exit;
}
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo "<b>Quote: </b>";
echo $row['quote']."<br>";
echo $row['by']."<br>";
?>
Anyone could please suggest me how to do that? Any kind of help will be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Not sure if this is actually what you need, but:
<?php
$rand = true;
if (isset($_GET['id'])) {
if (is_int($_GET['id'])) {
$id = (int) $_GET['id'];
$q = 'SELECT * FROM table WHERE id = ?';
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($dbc, $q);
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt, 'i', $id);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
if (mysqli_stmt_num_rows($stmt) == 1) {
$rand = false;
// display
}
}
}
if ($rand) {
$q = 'SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1';
// run query
$res = mysqli_fetch_array($r);
$url = 'www.example.com/index.php?id=' . $res['id'];
}
?>
The prepared statements aren't strictly necessary, since we already make sure that the $_GET['id'] value is an integer, but for the sake of completeness ;D
If you're selecting the data from multiple tables, you could have another table storing the combinations of data and then generate the url using the combination's ID as id parameter.

Answer 2

If you want to get a permalink, you will need to create another page. It will fetch an ID (or something that is identifying the data record you have chosen randomly) and display the specific data. You link to this at your random page.

Answer 3

Find a random row in your database.
Get the row's id.
Concatenate a URL with the id.
The URL should be pointing to a page that would extract the row with the id provided from the table.

Answer 4

I found this the other day and thought it to be pretty comprehensive:
http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/random