display random entry from database

[esoteric]

Hi,

 

Would someone please give me some assistance on how to display random products from my database

 

I need to display a maximum of 6 images and there link in two rows of 3 so;

 

[image] [image] [image]

[image] [image] [image]

 

and each image would have something like;

 

<a href="<? echo $row['product_link'] ?>"><img src="<? echo $row['product_image'] ?>"/></a>

 

but i don't know how to display these at random and make sure only 6 appear at a time.

 

Thanks for any help, hope you understand what im trying to explain

[poopinthescoop]

$sql = "SELECT * FROM table";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$rand_keys = array_rand($row, 6);

 

then loop it.

[Pikachu2000]

That isn't going to work. $row only holds one record, so that will only pull 6 random fields from one record. For that method to be successful, you'd need to push all the records into one array, then use array_rand() on that resulting array.

[Nodral]

Do you have a unique numbered column in your DB table?

 

If so, you could return all entries from this column into an array, pick 6 random numbers from the array, the call the pictures from the DB

 

ie

 

$sql="SELECT id FROM images";
$sql=mysql_query($sql);
while($row=mysql_fetch_array($sql){
$references[]=$row[id];
}

$random=array_rand($references,6);

foreach ($random as $value){
$sql="SELECT image, link FROM images WHERE id = $value";
$sql=mysql_query($sql);
$image=mysql_fetch_array($sql);
echo "<a href='". $image['link'] ."'><img src='".$image['image']."'/></a>";
}