MySQL ORDER BY rand(), name ASC

Question

I would like to take a database of say, 1000 users and select 20 random ones (ORDER BY rand(),LIMIT 20) then order the resulting set by the names.

Answer 1

Instead of using a subquery, you could use two separate queries, one to get the number of rows and the other to select the random rows.

SELECT COUNT(id) FROM users; #id is the primary key

Then, get a random twenty rows.

$start_row = mt_rand(0, $total_rows - 20);

The final query:

SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY name ASC LIMIT $start_row, 20;