Question

My database table has 15 records and I want to show 9 at random on screen.

SELECT * FROM tablename ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 9

This works as expected, but what if the table only has 9 records? I need to pull 15 random records.

I understand this will duplicate one or more records, but that’s my intention.

Answer 1

Your select will only pull the number of records in the table regardless of the order by. You can use various means to duplicate the table data, however, before you order them. For example, union all of the rows together twice:

select * from
(
    select * from tablename
    union all
    select * from tablename
) as tmp
order by rand() limit 9