I would like to know if it is possible to retrive one single random row from search results. I mean I have query like this:
SELECT mp.name,mp.icon,mp.id,mp.wspx,mp.wspy,ms.icon FROM maps_points as mp JOIN maps_section as ms ON(ms.id = mp.section)
I would like to get one random row from results generated from this query. Is that possible with one mysql query or should I just get all results and get this one random in PHP?
a simple way is to add ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1 to the query. Do take a look at some of the reasons why this can be a bad idea though, e.g.
Why don't use mysql ORDER BY RAND()?
MySQL: Alternatives to ORDER BY RAND()
How can i optimize MySQL's ORDER BY RAND() function?
SELECT mp.name,mp.icon,mp.id,mp.wspx,mp.wspy,ms.icon
FROM maps_points as mp
JOIN maps_section as ms ON(ms.id = mp.section)
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1
Ok, I knew this one, but is there better and faster way to do that ? I mean I've seen some other approaches but they were all about random row from table and I need to pick random row from some set of results :)
Related
i was using order by rand() to generate random rows from database without any issue but i reaalised that as the database size increase this rand() causes heavy load on server so i was looking for an alternative and i tried by generating one random number using php rand() function and put that as id in mysql query and it was very very fast since mysql was knowing the row id
but the issue is in my table all numbers are not availbale.for example 1,2,5,9,12 like that.
if php rand() generate number 3,4 etc the query will be blank as there is no id with number 3 , 4 etc.
what is the best way to generate random numbers preferable from php but it should generate the available no in that table so it must check that table.please advise.
$id23=rand(1,100000000);
SELECT items FROM tablea where status='0' and id='$id23' LIMIT 1
the above query is fast but generate sometimes no which is not availabel in database.
SELECT items FROM tablea where status=0 order by rand() LIMIT 1
the above query is too slow and causes heavy load on server
First of, all generate a random value from 1 to MAX(id), not 100000000.
Then there are at least a couple of good solutions:
Use > not =
SELECT items FROM tablea where status='0' and id>'$id23' LIMIT 1
Create an index on (status,id,items) to make this an index-only query.
Use =, but just try again with a different random value if you don't find a hit. Sometimes it will take several tries, but often it will take only one try. The = should be faster since it can use the primary key. And if it's faster and gets it in one try 90% of the time, that could make up for the other 10% of the time when it takes more than one try. Depends on how many gaps you have in your id values.
Use your DB to find the max value from the table, generate a random number less than or equal to that value, grab the first row in which the id is greater than or equal to your random number. No PHP necessary.
SELECT items
FROM tablea
WHERE status = '0' and
id >= FLOOR(1 + RAND() * (SELECT MAX(id) FROM tablea))
LIMIT 1
You are correct, ORDER BY RAND() is not good solution if you are dealing with large datasets. Depending how often it needs to be randomized, what you can do is generate a column with a random number and then update that number at some predefined interval.
You would take that column and use it as your sort index. This works well for a heavy read environment and produces predicable random order for a certain period of time.
A possible solution is to use limit:
$id23=rand(1,$numberOfRows);
SELECT items FROM tablea where status='0' LIMIT $id23 1
This wont produce any missed rows (but as hek2mgl mentioned) requires knowing the number of rows in the select.
I'm trying to get 4 random results from a table that holds approx 7 million records. Additionally, I also want to get 4 random records from the same table that are filtered by category.
Now, as you would imagine doing random sorting on a table this large causes the queries to take a few seconds, which is not ideal.
One other method I thought of for the non-filtered result set would be to just get PHP to select some random numbers between 1 - 7,000,000 or so and then do an IN(...) with the query to only grab those rows - and yes, I know that this method has a caveat in that you may get less than 4 if a record with that id no longer exists.
However, the above method obviously will not work with the category filtering as PHP doesn't know which record numbers belong to which category and hence cannot select the record numbers to select from.
Are there any better ways I can do this? Only way I can think of would be to store the record id's for each category in another table and then select random results from that and then select only those record ID's from the main table in a secondary query; but I'm sure there is a better way!?
You could of course use the RAND() function on a query using a LIMIT and WHERE (for the category). That however as you pointed out, entails a scan of the database which takes time, especially in your case due to the volume of data.
Your other alternative, again as you pointed out, to store id/category_id in another table might prove a bit faster but again there has to be a LIMIT and WHERE on that table which will also contain the same amount of records as the master table.
A different approach (if applicable) would be to have a table per category and store in that the IDs. If your categories are fixed or do not change that often, then you should be able to use that approach. In that case you will effectively remove the WHERE from the clause and getting a RAND() with a LIMIT on each category table would be faster since each category table will contain a subset of records from your main table.
Some other alternatives would be to use a key/value pair database just for that operation. MongoDb or Google AppEngine can help with that and are really fast.
You could also go towards the approach of a Master/Slave in your MySQL. The slave replicates content in real time but when you need to perform the expensive query you query the slave instead of the master, thus passing the load to a different machine.
Finally you could go with Sphinx which is a lot easier to install and maintain. You can then treat each of those category queries as a document search and let Sphinx randomize the results. This way you offset this expensive operation to a different layer and let MySQL continue with other operations.
Just some issues to consider.
Working off your random number approach
Get the max id in the database.
Create a temp table to store your matches.
Loop n times doing the following
Generate a random number between 1 and maxId
Get the first record with a record Id greater than the random number and insert it into your temp table
Your temp table now contains your random results.
Or you could dynamically generate sql with a union to do the query in one step.
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE ID > RAND() AND Category = zzz LIMIT 1
UNION
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE ID > RAND() AND Category = zzz LIMIT 1
UNION
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE ID > RAND() AND Category = zzz LIMIT 1
UNION
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE ID > RAND() AND Category = zzz LIMIT 1
Note: my sql may not be valid, as I'm not a mySql guy, but the theory should be sound
First you need to get number of rows ... something like this
select count(1) from tbl where category = ?
then select a random number
$offset = rand(1,$rowsNum);
and select a row with offset
select * FROM tbl LIMIT $offset, 1
in this way you avoid missing ids. The only problem is you need to run second query several times. Union may help in this case.
For MySQl you can use
RAND()
SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 4
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Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
MySQL select 10 random rows from 600K rows fast
I need to pull from a table a random id. At this moment only a few records exists but with time they will grow. What methods of getting this id are in Php or MySql, and what are the trade offs, consequences between them. One last thing i need speed and performance.
select * from YOUR_TABLE order by rand() limit 1
You can achieve this direct in your SQL:
SELECT `idfield` FROM `table` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,1;
Also see here for some alternatives.
This will be a simple means of execution than building the randomisation in your PHP and then passing to mySQL, though the link above details the merits of the various approaches.
SELECT id FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1
What this does is basically: take the table, order the records by a random number, and get the first record's ID.
There is already a lot of questions and answer about that:
Random Records Mysql PHP
mysql query with random and desc
If you have less that 500,000 records, the RAND() is perfectly fine.
SELECT * FROM tbl_name ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1
Well you can obtain a random number with RAND(), but you would still have to call that method/function until you actually get something (you can have 1,2,5,6,100 as id`s due to deletion).
there is a post on this http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
Procedures can be usefull (but said to be slow...):
1 var to get the maximum value
then produce a random within 1 and that interval (or get the minimum)
then query
I am building a php site using jquery and the DataTables plugin. My page is laid out just as it needs to be with pagination working but in dealing with large datasets, I have noticed the server is pulling ALL returned rows as opposed to the 10 row (can be more) limit stated within each 'page'.
Is it possible to limit the results of a query and yet keep say the ID numbers of those results in memory so when page 2 is hit (or the result number is changed) only new data is sought after?
Does it even make sense to do it this way?
I just dont want to query a DB with 2000 rows returned then have a 'front-end-plugin' make it look like the other results are hidden when they are truthfully on the page from the start.
The LIMIT clause in SQL has two parts -- the limit and the offset.
To get the first 10 rows:
SELECT ... LIMIT 0,10
To get the next 10 rows:
SELECT ... LIMIT 10,10
To get the next 10 rows:
SELECT ... LIMIT 20,10
As long as you ORDER the result set the same each time, you absolutely don't have to (and don't want to) first ask the database to send you all 2000 rows.
To display paging in conjunction with this, you still need to know how many total rows match your query. There are two ways to handle that --
1) Ask for a row count with a separate query
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table WHERE ...
2) Use the SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS hint in your query, which will tell MySQL to calculate how many rows match the query before returning only the 10 you asked for. You then issue a SELECT FOUND_ROWS() query to get that result.
SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS column1, column2 ... LIMIT 0,10
2 is preferable since it does not add an extra query to each page load.
To randomly select records from one table; do I have to always set a temporary variable in PHP? I need some help with selecting random rows within a CodeIgniter model, and then display three different ones in a view every time my homepage is viewed. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to solve this issue? Thanks in advance!
If you don't have a ton of rows, you can simply:
SELECT * FROM myTable ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3;
If you have many rows, this will get slow, but for smaller data sets it will work fine.
As Steve Michel mentions in his answer, this method can get very ugly for large tables. His suggestion is a good place to jump off from. If you know the approximate maximum integer PK on the table, you can do something like generating a random number between one and your max PK value, then grab random rows one at a time like:
$q="SELECT * FROM table WHERE id >= {$myRandomValue}";
$row = $db->fetchOne($q); //or whatever CI's interface to grab a single is like
Of course, if you need 3 random rows, you'll have three queries here, but as they're entirely on the PK, they'll be fast(er than randomizing the whole table).
I would do something like:
SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1;
This will put the data in a random order and then return only the first row from that random order.
I have this piece of code in production to get a random quote. Using MySQL's RAND function was super slow. Even with 100 quotes in the database, I was noticing a lag time on the website. With this, there was no lag at all.
$result = mysql_query('SELECT COUNT(*) FROM quotes');
$count = mysql_fetch_row($result);
$id = rand(1, $count[0]);
$result = mysql_query("SELECT author, quote FROM quotes WHERE id=$id");
you need a query like this:
SELECT *
FROM tablename
WHERE somefield='something'
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3
It is taken from the second result of
http://www.google.com/search?q=mysql+random
and it should work ;)
Ordering a big table by rand() can be very expensive if the table is very large. MySQL will need to build a temporary table and sort it. If you have primary key and you know how many rows are in the table, use LIMIT x,1 to grab a random row, where x is the number of the row you want to get.