Related
I have created an application to track progress in League of Legends for me and my friends. For this purpose, I collect information about the current rank several times a day into my MySQL database. To fetch the results and show the to them in the graph, I use the following query / queries:
SELECT
lol_summoner.name as name, grid.series + ? as timestamp,
AVG(NULLIF(lol.points, 0)) as points
FROM
series_tmp grid
JOIN
lol ON lol.timestamp >= grid.series AND lol.timestamp < grid.series + ?
JOIN
lol_summoner ON lol.summoner = lol_summoner.id
GROUP BY
lol_summoner.name, grid.series
ORDER BY
name, timestamp ASC
SELECT
lol_summoner.name as name, grid.series + ? as timestamp,
AVG(NULLIF(lol.points, 0)) as points
FROM
series_tmp grid
JOIN
lol ON lol.timestamp >= grid.series AND lol.timestamp < grid.series + ?
JOIN
lol_summoner ON lol.summoner = lol_summoner.id
WHERE
lol_summoner.name IN (". str_repeat('?, ', count($names) - 1) ."?)
GROUP BY
lol_summoner.name, grid.series
ORDER BY
name, timestamp ASC
The first query is used in case I want to retrieve all players which are saved in the database. The grid table is a temporary table which generated timestamps in a specific interval to retrive information in chunks of this interval. The two variable in this query are the interval. The second query is used if I want to retrieve information for specific players only.
The grid table is produces by the following stored procedure which is called with three parameters (n_first - first timestamp, n_last - last timestamp, n_increments - increments between two timestamps):
BEGIN
-- Create tmp table
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS series_tmp;
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE series_tmp (
series bigint
) engine = memory;
WHILE n_first <= n_last DO
-- Insert in tmp table
INSERT INTO series_tmp (series) VALUES (n_first);
-- Increment value by one
SET n_first = n_first + n_increment;
END WHILE;
END
The query works and finishes in reasonable time (~10 seconds) but I am thankful for any help to improve the query by either rewriting it or adding additional indexes to the database.
/Edit:
After review of #Rick James answer, I modified the queries as follows:
SELECT lol_summoner.name as name, (lol.timestamp div :range) * :range + :half_range as timestamp, AVG(NULLIF(lol.points, 0)) as points
FROM lol
JOIN lol_summoner ON lol.summoner = lol_summoner.id
GROUP by lol_summoner.name, lol.timestamp div :range
ORDER by name, timestamp ASC
SELECT lol_summoner.name as name, (lol.timestamp div :range) * :range + :half_range as timestamp, AVG(NULLIF(lol.points, 0)) as points
FROM lol
JOIN lol_summoner ON lol.summoner = lol_summoner.id
WHERE lol_summoner.name IN (<NAMES>)
GROUP by lol_summoner.name, lol.timestamp div " . $steps . "
ORDER by name, timestamp ASC
This improves the query execution time by a really good margin (finished way under 1s).
Problem 1 and Solution
You need a series of integers between two values? And they differ by 1? Or by some larger value?
First, create a permanent table of the numbers from 0 to some large enough value:
CREATE TABLE Num10 ( n INT );
INSERT INTO Num10 VALUES (0),(1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9);
CREATE TABLE Nums ( n INT, PRIMARY KEY(n))
SELECT a.n*1000 + b.n*100 + c.n*10 + d.n
FROM Num10 AS a
JOIN Num10 AS b -- note "cross join"
JOIN Num10 AS c
JOIN Num10 AS d;
Now Nums has 0..9999. (Make it bigger if you might need more.)
To get a sequence of consecutive numbers from 123 through 234:
SELECT 123 + n FROM Nums WHERE n < 234-123+1;
To get a sequence of consecutive numbers from 12345 through 23456, in steps of 15:
SELECT 12345 + 15*n FROM Nums WHERE n < (23456-12345+1)/15;
JOIN to a SELECT like one of those instead of to series_tmp.
Barring other issue, that should significantly speed things up.
Problem 2
You are GROUPing BY series, but ORDERing by timestamp. They are related, so you might get the 'right' answer. But think about it.
Problem 3
You seem to be building "buckets" (called "series"?) from "timestamps". Is this correct? If so, let's work backwards -- Turn a "timestamp" into a "bucket" number:
bucket_number = (timestamp - start) / bucket_size
By doing that throughout, you can avoid 'Problem 1' and eliminate my solution to it. That is, reformulate the entire queries in terms of buckets.
The issue here is related to another question I had...
I have millions of records, and the ID of each of those records is auto-incremented, unfortunately sometimes the ID that is generated is sometimes thrown away so there are many many gaps between IDs.
I want to find the gaps, and re-use the ids that were abandoned.
What's an efficient way to do this in MySQL?
First of all, what advantage are you trying to get by reusing the skipped values? An ordinary INT UNSIGNED will let you count up to 4,294,967,295. With "millions of records" your database would have to grow a thousand times over before running out of valid IDs. (And then using a BIGINT UNSIGNED will bump you up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 values.)
Trying to recycle values MySQL has skipped is likely to use up a lot of your time trying to compensate for something that really doesn't bother MySQL in the first place.
With that said, you can find missing IDs with something like:
SELECT id + 1
FROM the_table
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM the_table t2 WHERE t2.id = the_table.id + 1);
This will find only the first missing number in each sequence (e.g., if you have {1, 2, 3, 8, 10} it will find {4,9}) but it's likely to be efficient, and of course once you've filled in an ID you can always run it again.
The following will return a row for each gap in the integer field "n" in mytab:
/* cs will contain 1 row for each contiguous sequence of integers in mytab.n
and will have the start of that chain.
ce will contain the end of that chain */
create temporary table cs (row int auto_increment primary key, n int);
create temporary table ce like cs;
insert into cs (n) select n from mytab where n-1 not in (select n from mytab) order by n;
insert into ce (n) select n from mytab where n+1 not in (select n from mytab) order by n;
select ce.n + 1 as bgap, cs.n - 1 as egap
from cs, ce where cs.row = ce.row + 1;
If instead of the gaps you want the contiguous chains then the final select should be:
select cs.n as bchain, ce.n as echain from cs,ce where cs.row=ce.row;
This solution is better, in case you need to include the first element as 1:
SELECT
1 AS gap_start,
MIN(e.id) - 1 AS gap_end
FROM
factura_entrada e
WHERE
NOT EXISTS(
SELECT
1
FROM
factura_entrada
WHERE
id = 1
)
LIMIT 1
UNION
SELECT
a.id + 1 AS gap_start,
MIN(b.id)- 1 AS gap_end
FROM
factura_entrada AS a,
factura_entrada AS b
WHERE
a.id < b.id
GROUP BY
a.id
HAVING
gap_start < MIN(b.id);
If you are using an MariaDB you have a faster option
SELECT * FROM seq_1_to_50000 where seq not in (select col from table);
docs: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/sequence/
I have a select statement that I am trying to build a list of scripts as long as the users role is not in the scripts.sans_role_priority field. This works great if there is only one entry into the field but once I add more than one the whole function quits working. I am sure I am overlooking something simple, just need another set of eyes on it. Any help wold be appreciated.
script:
SELECT *
FROM scripts
WHERE active = 1
AND homePage='Y'
AND (role_priority > 40 OR role_priority = 40)
AND (40 not in (sans_role_priority) )
ORDER BY seq ASC
data in scripts.sans_role_priority(varchar) = "30,40".
Additional testing adds this:
When I switch the values in the field to "40, 30" the select works. Continuing to debug...
Maybe you are looking for FIND_IN_SET().
SELECT *
FROM scripts
WHERE active = 1
AND homePage='Y'
AND (role_priority > 40 OR role_priority = 40)
AND NOT FIND_IN_SET('40', sans_role_priority)
ORDER BY seq ASC
Note that having "X,Y,Z" as VARCHAR values in some fields reveals that your DB schema may be improved in order to have X, Y and Z stored as separate values in a related table.
SELECT *
FROM scripts
WHERE active = 1
AND homePage='Y'
AND role_priority >= 40
AND NOT FIND_IN_SET(40,sans_role_priority)
ORDER BY seq ASC
See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_find-in-set
Note that CSV in databases is just about the worst antipattern you can find.
It should be avoided at all costs because:
You cannot use an index on a CSV field (at least not a mentally sane one);
Joins on CSV fields are a major PITA;
Selects on them are uber-slow;
They violate 1NF.
They waste storage.
Instead of using a CSV field, consider putting sans_role_priority in another table with a link back to scripts.
table script_sans_role_priority
-------------------------------
script_id integer foreign key references script(id)
srp integer
primary key (script_id, srp)
Then the renormalized select will be:
SELECT s.*
FROM scripts s
LEFT JOIN script_sans_role_priority srp
ON (s.id = srp.script_id AND srp.srp = 40)
WHERE s.active = 1
AND s.homePage='Y'
AND s.role_priority >= 40
AND srp.script_id IS NULL
ORDER BY seq ASC
SELECT *
FROM scripts
WHERE active = '1'
AND homePage='Y'
AND role_priority >= '40'
AND sans_role_priority <> '40'
ORDER BY seq ASC
What is a fast way to select a random row from a large mysql table?
I'm working in php, but I'm interested in any solution even if it's in another language.
Grab all the id's, pick a random one from it, and retrieve the full row.
If you know the id's are sequential without holes, you can just grab the max and calculate a random id.
If there are holes here and there but mostly sequential values, and you don't care about a slightly skewed randomness, grab the max value, calculate an id, and select the first row with an id equal to or above the one you calculated. The reason for the skewing is that id's following such holes will have a higher chance of being picked than ones that follow another id.
If you order by random, you're going to have a terrible table-scan on your hands, and the word quick doesn't apply to such a solution.
Don't do that, nor should you order by a GUID, it has the same problem.
I knew there had to be a way to do it in a single query in a fast way. And here it is:
A fast way without involvement of external code, kudos to
http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
SELECT name
FROM random AS r1 JOIN
(SELECT (RAND() *
(SELECT MAX(id)
FROM random)) AS id)
AS r2
WHERE r1.id >= r2.id
ORDER BY r1.id ASC
LIMIT 1;
MediaWiki uses an interesting trick (for Wikipedia's Special:Random feature): the table with the articles has an extra column with a random number (generated when the article is created). To get a random article, generate a random number and get the article with the next larger or smaller (don't recall which) value in the random number column. With an index, this can be very fast. (And MediaWiki is written in PHP and developed for MySQL.)
This approach can cause a problem if the resulting numbers are badly distributed; IIRC, this has been fixed on MediaWiki, so if you decide to do it this way you should take a look at the code to see how it's currently done (probably they periodically regenerate the random number column).
Here's a solution that runs fairly quickly, and it gets a better random distribution without depending on id values being contiguous or starting at 1.
SET #r := (SELECT ROUND(RAND() * (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM mytable)));
SET #sql := CONCAT('SELECT * FROM mytable LIMIT ', #r, ', 1');
PREPARE stmt1 FROM #sql;
EXECUTE stmt1;
Maybe you could do something like:
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE id=
(FLOOR(RAND() *
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table)
)
);
This is assuming your ID numbers are all sequential with no gaps.
Add a column containing a calculated random value to each row, and use that in the ordering clause, limiting to one result upon selection. This works out faster than having the table scan that ORDER BY RANDOM() causes.
Update: You still need to calculate some random value prior to issuing the SELECT statement upon retrieval, of course, e.g.
SELECT * FROM `foo` WHERE `foo_rand` >= {some random value} LIMIT 1
There is another way to produce random rows using only a query and without order by rand().
It involves User Defined Variables.
See how to produce random rows from a table
In order to find random rows from a table, don’t use ORDER BY RAND() because it forces MySQL to do a full file sort and only then to retrieve the limit rows number required. In order to avoid this full file sort, use the RAND() function only at the where clause. It will stop as soon as it reaches to the required number of rows.
See
http://www.rndblog.com/how-to-select-random-rows-in-mysql/
if you don't delete row in this table, the most efficient way is:
(if you know the mininum id just skip it)
SELECT MIN(id) AS minId, MAX(id) AS maxId FROM table WHERE 1
$randId=mt_rand((int)$row['minId'], (int)$row['maxId']);
SELECT id,name,... FROM table WHERE id=$randId LIMIT 1
I see here a lot of solution. One or two seems ok but other solutions have some constraints. But the following solution will work for all situation
select a.* from random_data a, (select max(id)*rand() randid from random_data) b
where a.id >= b.randid limit 1;
Here, id, don't need to be sequential. It could be any primary key/unique/auto increment column. Please see the following Fastest way to select a random row from a big MySQL table
Thanks
Zillur
- www.techinfobest.com
For selecting multiple random rows from a given table (say 'words'), our team came up with this beauty:
SELECT * FROM
`words` AS r1 JOIN
(SELECT MAX(`WordID`) as wid_c FROM `words`) as tmp1
WHERE r1.WordID >= (SELECT (RAND() * tmp1.wid_c) AS id) LIMIT n
The classic "SELECT id FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1" is actually OK.
See the follow excerpt from the MySQL manual:
If you use LIMIT row_count with ORDER BY, MySQL ends the sorting as soon as it has found the first row_count rows of the sorted result, rather than sorting the entire result.
With a order yo will do a full scan table.
Its best if you do a select count(*) and later get a random row=rownum between 0 and the last registry
An easy but slow way would be (good for smallish tables)
SELECT * from TABLE order by RAND() LIMIT 1
In pseudo code:
sql "select id from table"
store result in list
n = random(size of list)
sql "select * from table where id=" + list[n]
This assumes that id is a unique (primary) key.
Take a look at this link by Jan Kneschke or this SO answer as they both discuss the same question. The SO answer goes over various options also and has some good suggestions depending on your needs. Jan goes over all the various options and the performance characteristics of each. He ends up with the following for the most optimized method by which to do this within a MySQL select:
SELECT name
FROM random AS r1 JOIN
(SELECT (RAND() *
(SELECT MAX(id)
FROM random)) AS id)
AS r2
WHERE r1.id >= r2.id
ORDER BY r1.id ASC
LIMIT 1;
HTH,
-Dipin
I'm a bit new to SQL but how about generating a random number in PHP and using
SELECT * FROM the_table WHERE primary_key >= $randNr
this doesn't solve the problem with holes in the table.
But here's a twist on lassevks suggestion:
SELECT primary_key FROM the_table
Use mysql_num_rows() in PHP create a random number based on the above result:
SELECT * FROM the_table WHERE primary_key = rand_number
On a side note just how slow is SELECT * FROM the_table:
Creating a random number based on mysql_num_rows() and then moving the data pointer to that point mysql_data_seek(). Just how slow will this be on large tables with say a million rows?
I ran into the problem where my IDs were not sequential. What I came up with this.
SELECT * FROM products WHERE RAND()<=(5/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM products)) LIMIT 1
The rows returned are approximately 5, but I limit it to 1.
If you want to add another WHERE clause it becomes a bit more interesting. Say you want to search for products on discount.
SELECT * FROM products WHERE RAND()<=(100/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM pt_products)) AND discount<.2 LIMIT 1
What you have to do is make sure you are returning enough result which is why I have it set to 100. Having a WHERE discount<.2 clause in the subquery was 10x slower, so it's better to return more results and limit.
Use the below query to get the random row
SELECT user_firstname ,
COUNT(DISTINCT usr_fk_id) cnt
FROM userdetails
GROUP BY usr_fk_id
ORDER BY cnt ASC
LIMIT 1
In my case my table has an id as primary key, auto-increment with no gaps, so I can use COUNT(*) or MAX(id) to get the number of rows.
I made this script to test the fastest operation:
logTime();
query("SELECT COUNT(id) FROM tbl");
logTime();
query("SELECT MAX(id) FROM tbl");
logTime();
query("SELECT id FROM tbl ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1");
logTime();
The results are:
Count: 36.8418693542479 ms
Max: 0.241041183472 ms
Order: 0.216960906982 ms
Answer with the order method:
SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * (
SELECT id FROM tbl ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1
)) n FROM tbl LIMIT 1
...
SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE id = $result;
I have used this and the job was done
the reference from here
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE RAND()<(SELECT ((30/COUNT(*))*10) FROM myTable) ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 30;
Create a Function to do this most likely the best answer and most fastest answer here!
Pros - Works even with Gaps and extremely fast.
<?
$sqlConnect = mysqli_connect('localhost','username','password','database');
function rando($data,$find,$max = '0'){
global $sqlConnect; // Set as mysqli connection variable, fetches variable outside of function set as GLOBAL
if($data == 's1'){
$query = mysqli_query($sqlConnect, "SELECT * FROM `yourtable` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT {$find},1");
$fetched_data = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query);
if(mysqli_num_rows($fetched_data>0){
return $fetch_$data;
}else{
rando('','',$max); // Start Over the results returned nothing
}
}else{
if($max != '0'){
$irand = rand(0,$max);
rando('s1',$irand,$max); // Start rando with new random ID to fetch
}else{
$query = mysqli_query($sqlConnect, "SELECT `id` FROM `yourtable` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT 0,1");
$fetched_data = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query);
$max = $fetched_data['id'];
$irand = rand(1,$max);
rando('s1',$irand,$max); // Runs rando against the random ID we have selected if data exist will return
}
}
}
$your_data = rando(); // Returns listing data for a random entry as a ASSOC ARRAY
?>
Please keep in mind this code as not been tested but is a working concept to return random entries even with gaps.. As long as the gaps are not huge enough to cause a load time issue.
Quick and dirty method:
SET #COUNTER=SELECT COUNT(*) FROM your_table;
SELECT PrimaryKey
FROM your_table
LIMIT 1 OFFSET (RAND() * #COUNTER);
The complexity of the first query is O(1) for MyISAM tables.
The second query accompanies a table full scan. Complexity = O(n)
Dirty and quick method:
Keep a separate table for this purpose only. You should also insert the same rows to this table whenever inserting to the original table. Assumption: No DELETEs.
CREATE TABLE Aux(
MyPK INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
PrimaryKey INT
);
SET #MaxPK = (SELECT MAX(MyPK) FROM Aux);
SET #RandPK = CAST(RANDOM() * #MaxPK, INT)
SET #PrimaryKey = (SELECT PrimaryKey FROM Aux WHERE MyPK = #RandPK);
If DELETEs are allowed,
SET #delta = CAST(#RandPK/10, INT);
SET #PrimaryKey = (SELECT PrimaryKey
FROM Aux
WHERE MyPK BETWEEN #RandPK - #delta AND #RandPK + #delta
LIMIT 1);
The overall complexity is O(1).
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM yourTable WHERE 4 = 4 LIMIT 1;
What is a fast way to select a random row from a large mysql table?
I'm working in php, but I'm interested in any solution even if it's in another language.
Grab all the id's, pick a random one from it, and retrieve the full row.
If you know the id's are sequential without holes, you can just grab the max and calculate a random id.
If there are holes here and there but mostly sequential values, and you don't care about a slightly skewed randomness, grab the max value, calculate an id, and select the first row with an id equal to or above the one you calculated. The reason for the skewing is that id's following such holes will have a higher chance of being picked than ones that follow another id.
If you order by random, you're going to have a terrible table-scan on your hands, and the word quick doesn't apply to such a solution.
Don't do that, nor should you order by a GUID, it has the same problem.
I knew there had to be a way to do it in a single query in a fast way. And here it is:
A fast way without involvement of external code, kudos to
http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
SELECT name
FROM random AS r1 JOIN
(SELECT (RAND() *
(SELECT MAX(id)
FROM random)) AS id)
AS r2
WHERE r1.id >= r2.id
ORDER BY r1.id ASC
LIMIT 1;
MediaWiki uses an interesting trick (for Wikipedia's Special:Random feature): the table with the articles has an extra column with a random number (generated when the article is created). To get a random article, generate a random number and get the article with the next larger or smaller (don't recall which) value in the random number column. With an index, this can be very fast. (And MediaWiki is written in PHP and developed for MySQL.)
This approach can cause a problem if the resulting numbers are badly distributed; IIRC, this has been fixed on MediaWiki, so if you decide to do it this way you should take a look at the code to see how it's currently done (probably they periodically regenerate the random number column).
Here's a solution that runs fairly quickly, and it gets a better random distribution without depending on id values being contiguous or starting at 1.
SET #r := (SELECT ROUND(RAND() * (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM mytable)));
SET #sql := CONCAT('SELECT * FROM mytable LIMIT ', #r, ', 1');
PREPARE stmt1 FROM #sql;
EXECUTE stmt1;
Maybe you could do something like:
SELECT * FROM table
WHERE id=
(FLOOR(RAND() *
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table)
)
);
This is assuming your ID numbers are all sequential with no gaps.
Add a column containing a calculated random value to each row, and use that in the ordering clause, limiting to one result upon selection. This works out faster than having the table scan that ORDER BY RANDOM() causes.
Update: You still need to calculate some random value prior to issuing the SELECT statement upon retrieval, of course, e.g.
SELECT * FROM `foo` WHERE `foo_rand` >= {some random value} LIMIT 1
There is another way to produce random rows using only a query and without order by rand().
It involves User Defined Variables.
See how to produce random rows from a table
In order to find random rows from a table, don’t use ORDER BY RAND() because it forces MySQL to do a full file sort and only then to retrieve the limit rows number required. In order to avoid this full file sort, use the RAND() function only at the where clause. It will stop as soon as it reaches to the required number of rows.
See
http://www.rndblog.com/how-to-select-random-rows-in-mysql/
if you don't delete row in this table, the most efficient way is:
(if you know the mininum id just skip it)
SELECT MIN(id) AS minId, MAX(id) AS maxId FROM table WHERE 1
$randId=mt_rand((int)$row['minId'], (int)$row['maxId']);
SELECT id,name,... FROM table WHERE id=$randId LIMIT 1
I see here a lot of solution. One or two seems ok but other solutions have some constraints. But the following solution will work for all situation
select a.* from random_data a, (select max(id)*rand() randid from random_data) b
where a.id >= b.randid limit 1;
Here, id, don't need to be sequential. It could be any primary key/unique/auto increment column. Please see the following Fastest way to select a random row from a big MySQL table
Thanks
Zillur
- www.techinfobest.com
For selecting multiple random rows from a given table (say 'words'), our team came up with this beauty:
SELECT * FROM
`words` AS r1 JOIN
(SELECT MAX(`WordID`) as wid_c FROM `words`) as tmp1
WHERE r1.WordID >= (SELECT (RAND() * tmp1.wid_c) AS id) LIMIT n
The classic "SELECT id FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1" is actually OK.
See the follow excerpt from the MySQL manual:
If you use LIMIT row_count with ORDER BY, MySQL ends the sorting as soon as it has found the first row_count rows of the sorted result, rather than sorting the entire result.
With a order yo will do a full scan table.
Its best if you do a select count(*) and later get a random row=rownum between 0 and the last registry
An easy but slow way would be (good for smallish tables)
SELECT * from TABLE order by RAND() LIMIT 1
In pseudo code:
sql "select id from table"
store result in list
n = random(size of list)
sql "select * from table where id=" + list[n]
This assumes that id is a unique (primary) key.
Take a look at this link by Jan Kneschke or this SO answer as they both discuss the same question. The SO answer goes over various options also and has some good suggestions depending on your needs. Jan goes over all the various options and the performance characteristics of each. He ends up with the following for the most optimized method by which to do this within a MySQL select:
SELECT name
FROM random AS r1 JOIN
(SELECT (RAND() *
(SELECT MAX(id)
FROM random)) AS id)
AS r2
WHERE r1.id >= r2.id
ORDER BY r1.id ASC
LIMIT 1;
HTH,
-Dipin
I'm a bit new to SQL but how about generating a random number in PHP and using
SELECT * FROM the_table WHERE primary_key >= $randNr
this doesn't solve the problem with holes in the table.
But here's a twist on lassevks suggestion:
SELECT primary_key FROM the_table
Use mysql_num_rows() in PHP create a random number based on the above result:
SELECT * FROM the_table WHERE primary_key = rand_number
On a side note just how slow is SELECT * FROM the_table:
Creating a random number based on mysql_num_rows() and then moving the data pointer to that point mysql_data_seek(). Just how slow will this be on large tables with say a million rows?
I ran into the problem where my IDs were not sequential. What I came up with this.
SELECT * FROM products WHERE RAND()<=(5/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM products)) LIMIT 1
The rows returned are approximately 5, but I limit it to 1.
If you want to add another WHERE clause it becomes a bit more interesting. Say you want to search for products on discount.
SELECT * FROM products WHERE RAND()<=(100/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM pt_products)) AND discount<.2 LIMIT 1
What you have to do is make sure you are returning enough result which is why I have it set to 100. Having a WHERE discount<.2 clause in the subquery was 10x slower, so it's better to return more results and limit.
Use the below query to get the random row
SELECT user_firstname ,
COUNT(DISTINCT usr_fk_id) cnt
FROM userdetails
GROUP BY usr_fk_id
ORDER BY cnt ASC
LIMIT 1
In my case my table has an id as primary key, auto-increment with no gaps, so I can use COUNT(*) or MAX(id) to get the number of rows.
I made this script to test the fastest operation:
logTime();
query("SELECT COUNT(id) FROM tbl");
logTime();
query("SELECT MAX(id) FROM tbl");
logTime();
query("SELECT id FROM tbl ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1");
logTime();
The results are:
Count: 36.8418693542479 ms
Max: 0.241041183472 ms
Order: 0.216960906982 ms
Answer with the order method:
SELECT FLOOR(RAND() * (
SELECT id FROM tbl ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1
)) n FROM tbl LIMIT 1
...
SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE id = $result;
I have used this and the job was done
the reference from here
SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE RAND()<(SELECT ((30/COUNT(*))*10) FROM myTable) ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 30;
Create a Function to do this most likely the best answer and most fastest answer here!
Pros - Works even with Gaps and extremely fast.
<?
$sqlConnect = mysqli_connect('localhost','username','password','database');
function rando($data,$find,$max = '0'){
global $sqlConnect; // Set as mysqli connection variable, fetches variable outside of function set as GLOBAL
if($data == 's1'){
$query = mysqli_query($sqlConnect, "SELECT * FROM `yourtable` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT {$find},1");
$fetched_data = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query);
if(mysqli_num_rows($fetched_data>0){
return $fetch_$data;
}else{
rando('','',$max); // Start Over the results returned nothing
}
}else{
if($max != '0'){
$irand = rand(0,$max);
rando('s1',$irand,$max); // Start rando with new random ID to fetch
}else{
$query = mysqli_query($sqlConnect, "SELECT `id` FROM `yourtable` ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT 0,1");
$fetched_data = mysqli_fetch_assoc($query);
$max = $fetched_data['id'];
$irand = rand(1,$max);
rando('s1',$irand,$max); // Runs rando against the random ID we have selected if data exist will return
}
}
}
$your_data = rando(); // Returns listing data for a random entry as a ASSOC ARRAY
?>
Please keep in mind this code as not been tested but is a working concept to return random entries even with gaps.. As long as the gaps are not huge enough to cause a load time issue.
Quick and dirty method:
SET #COUNTER=SELECT COUNT(*) FROM your_table;
SELECT PrimaryKey
FROM your_table
LIMIT 1 OFFSET (RAND() * #COUNTER);
The complexity of the first query is O(1) for MyISAM tables.
The second query accompanies a table full scan. Complexity = O(n)
Dirty and quick method:
Keep a separate table for this purpose only. You should also insert the same rows to this table whenever inserting to the original table. Assumption: No DELETEs.
CREATE TABLE Aux(
MyPK INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
PrimaryKey INT
);
SET #MaxPK = (SELECT MAX(MyPK) FROM Aux);
SET #RandPK = CAST(RANDOM() * #MaxPK, INT)
SET #PrimaryKey = (SELECT PrimaryKey FROM Aux WHERE MyPK = #RandPK);
If DELETEs are allowed,
SET #delta = CAST(#RandPK/10, INT);
SET #PrimaryKey = (SELECT PrimaryKey
FROM Aux
WHERE MyPK BETWEEN #RandPK - #delta AND #RandPK + #delta
LIMIT 1);
The overall complexity is O(1).
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM yourTable WHERE 4 = 4 LIMIT 1;