Question

I need to find all records for a particular resource and display them in a random order, but with consistent pagination (you won’t see the same record twice if you start paging). The display order should be randomized each time a user visits a page. I am using will_paginate. Any advice?

Answer 1

Store a random number in the user session cookies, then use that as seed for your database random function. This will be the same until the user closes their browser, and thus they will all see random, consistent records:

Get a large, random number:

cookies[:seed] = SecureRandom.random_number.to_s[2..20].to_i

Use this seed with e.g. MySQL:

SomeModel.all.order("RAND ?", cookies[:seed])