Rails select random record

Question

I don\'t know if I\'m just looking in the wrong places here or what, but does active record have a method for retrieving a random object?

Something like?

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Answer 1

If you would need a random record but only within certain criteria you could use "random_where" from this code:

module ActiveRecord
  class Base
    def self.random
      if (c = count) != 0
        find(:first, :offset =>rand(c))
      end
    end

    def self.random_where(*params)
      if (c = where(*params).count) != 0
        where(*params).find(:first, :offset =>rand(c))
      end
    end

  end
end

For e.g :

@user = User.random_where("active = 1")

This function is very useful for displaying random products based on some additional criteria