Re: Extracting random rows

hi, do try this - "select * from my_table orer by rand() limit my_max_rows" like "select * from questions order by rand() limit 5". works for me. i'm surprised too. but if u still want to do it in PHP, do go ahead. warm regards, -shiva "Scott" <gildedpage@comcast.net> wrote in message news:1067827213.2949.33.camel@localhost.localdomain... > Hello, > > Below is a boiled-down example of the problem I'm having. I'm trying to > extract rows randomly from MySql, but I keep getting the same one. It > works if I query MySql directly from the command line, so it seems like > a php problem. > > Thanks, > Scott > > <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN"> > <html> > <head> > <title></title> > <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; > charset=iso-8859-1"> > <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Quanta Plus"> > </head> > <body> > > <? > > include ("connectlpi.php"); > > $sql = " > select id > from $table_name > order by rand() > limit 1 > "; > > $result = @mysql_query($sql,$connection) or die("Couldn't execute > query."); > > while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { > > $id = $row['id']; > > } > > echo "$id"; > > ?> > > > > </body> > </html>