Question

How to SELECT random records from a table in MySQL and PHP

Answer 1

$con = mysql_connect("localhost", "user", "password");
if (!$con)
    die (mysql_error());
if ( ! mysql_select_db("database name", $con))
    die (mysql_error());

// select 10 random records (can be 5 or 100)
$sql = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 10', $con);
if ( ! $sql ) die(mysql_error());

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($sql))
{
  echo $row['first_name'] . "<br>";
}

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