I need some help here.
I have a mysql table called dictionary like this:
id word
1 test
2 hello
4 bye
7 werd
In php, I want to query the db so that I can get an array of the id field
so the array would list 1 2 4 7.
With this array, I want to run the array_rand function in php so I can get a random number from 1 2 4 7.
Can someone show me the proper mysql query to list the id field and return it into php as an array? and how I could run that array with random array function.
No need shuffle this in php, - effective is to
use "SELECT id FROM table ORDER BY rand();"
than take all records and store id into array ...
If you plan on using the random row and then querying for another, I would just randomize on the MySQL query. Get a count of the rows in the table, create a random integer somewhere between 0 and that count, and then use LIMIT in your MySQL query to return a random row.
If you plan on keeping it all in memory, then David's answer would work better.
