[development] Drupal 7 Entities - view random node

[nan wich]

Yes, I saw that - and many others. One variation uses a LOCK to eliminate 
the race potential, but I am reluctant to do that. Unfortunately, that has a 
problem if there are key gaps. This looks a bit more fail-proof: 
http://edrackham.com/featured/get-random-row-with-mysql-without-order-by-rand/
 
My issue with these techniques is that the vast majority of the users of the 
Quotes module don't have anywhere near 12K quotes nodes (I personally have 163), 
so do I let the one suffer, or let everyone use the "improved" technique 
(meaning an additional table), or choose some point at which to switch 
techniques (code bloat). And, of course, making sure it works on Postgres as 
well.
 
I'd be happy to move this discussion to another venue if anyone is upset. 

Nancy
 
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.



________________________________

From: Larry Garfield
Actually, I just found this in the MySQL manual in user comments:

SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * COUNT(*)) AS rand_row FROM {mytemp};
SELECT nid FROM {mytemp} LIMIT $rand_row, 1;

That could actually be faster, at the cost of being two queries so there are 
technically potential race conditions.  (Unlikely to be a problem in practice, 
but still there.)  I've not tried the above; I just saw it and thought it was 
cool. :-)  (It's also MySQL-specific. I don't know if the same thing would 
work well on other databases.)
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