Question

Ok I really don’t know how to explain this even in the title but this is what I want.

first I do have 5 records

id | name  |
------------
1  | ringo |
------------
2  | nashi |
------------
3  | momo  |
------------
4  | manga |
------------
5  | tokyo |

now I produce a random number on what row I will start querying. For example I got a random number of 4 and so I will get rows 4 and 5. But my problem is I need 4 records on every query. So it means I will go back to the first record and get the first two rows.

Is there any possible way that I can go back on the first row if my query results lacks the number of records I want?

This is a connected question Select from nth record and so on in MySQL that shows what I have done so far.

Answer 1

If you sort the table first by records greater than the pivot id, then by id, you need only LIMIT the resultset to the first four records:

SELECT * FROM my_table ORDER BY id >= 4 DESC, id LIMIT 4

See it on sqlfiddle.