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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-08T09:04:07+00:00

I am thinking of returning a randomly ordered SQL response where the results are

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I am thinking of returning a randomly ordered SQL response where the results are mixed up randomly, with a limit.
The thing is I need All the rows back, basically divided into groups (chunks of rows). I hope I am clear.

For example, from table A: 

ID   |   NAME    |   PROFESSION
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1    |  Jack     |   Carpenter
2    |  Rob      |   Manager
3    |  Phil     |   Driver
4    |  Mary     |   Cook
5    |  Tim      |   Postman
6    |  Bob      |   Programmer

The query would return something like this:

With a limit of 0,2:

6    |  Bob      |   Programmer
4    |  Mary     |   Cook

With a limit of 2,2:

1    |  Jack     |   Carpenter
5    |  Tim      |   Postman

With a limit of 4,2:

3    |  Phil     |   Driver
2    |  Rob      |   Manager

Note: all the table rows were returned. In my page I need to have a << >> buttons that will show the user the needed “group”s of data.
How do I go about writing such a query ?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A better name for your explained problem would be randomly shuffled records. That is true that the order is random but since the order needs to be remembered, you have no choice but to save it in a column. You can do this by saving a randomly populated field and ordering your records based on that. This way you have ordered your records in no specific order while the order is remembered for future select queries. And whenever you got tired of the order, you can update the mentioned field with new randomly generated values to shuffle them again. This is the technique used by players to shuffle a playlist without replaying a song twice.

    [EDIT]

    While the first given solution stands as the general answer, there’s a hack you can use in MySQL to randomly order records. In this way, all you need to store for remembering an order is its seed.

    SELECT * FROM tbl ORDER BY RAND(s);

    For instance, if you want each user see the records in some different randomly ordered, you can use their user_id as the seed. This way the order each user will ever see the records in, will remain the same while it is random and different from other users.

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