I would like to take a database of say, 1000 users and select 20 random ones (ORDER BY rand()
,LIMIT 20
) then order the resulting set by the names. I came up with the following query which is not working like I hoped.
SELECT * FROM users WHERE 1 ORDER BY rand(), name ASC LIMIT 20
Use a subquery:
SELECT * FROM
(
SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY rand() LIMIT 20
) T1
ORDER BY name
The inner query selects 20 users at random and the outer query orders the selected users by name.
Instead of using a subquery, you could use two separate queries, one to get the number of rows and the other to select the random rows.
SELECT COUNT(id) FROM users; #id is the primary key
Then, get a random twenty rows.
$start_row = mt_rand(0, $total_rows - 20);
The final query:
SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY name ASC LIMIT $start_row, 20;
Beware of ORDER BY RAND() because of performance and results. Check this article out: http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT *
FROM users
WHERE 1
ORDER BY
rand()
LIMIT 20
) q
ORDER BY
name
Use a subquery:
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 20
) u
ORDER BY name
or a join to itself:
SELECT * FROM users u1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT id FROM users ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 20
) u2 USING(id)
ORDER BY u1.name