Display random row from a MySQL table


To display a single random row, use the RAND() with LIMIT. Here, LIMIT is used to fetch the number of records, since we want only a single row, therefore use LIMIT 1. Let us first create a table −

mysql> create table DemoTable
(
   Id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
   Name varchar(50),
   Quote text
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.71 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable(Name,Quote) values('Chris','MySQL is a relational database');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.11 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable(Name,Quote) values('Robert','Java is an Object Oriented Programming Language');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.17 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable(Name,Quote) values('Mike','C is a Procedural Language');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.15 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable(Name,Quote) values('David','Hibernate and spring is a framework');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.15 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement −

mysql> select *from DemoTable;

This will produce the following output −

+----+--------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Id | Name   | Quote                                           |
+----+--------+-------------------------------------------------+
|  1 | Chris  | MySQL is a relational database                  |
|  2 | Robert | Java is an Object Oriented Programming Language |
|  3 | Mike   | C is a Procedural Language                      |
|  4 | David  | Hibernate and spring is a framework             |
+----+--------+-------------------------------------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Following is the query to display a random from a MySQL table −

mysql> select Id,Name,Quote from DemoTable order by rand() limit 1;

This will produce the following output −

+----+------+----------------------------+
| Id | Name | Quote                      |
+----+------+----------------------------+
|  3 | Mike | C is a Procedural Language |
+----+------+----------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Updated on: 03-Oct-2019

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