Fetch random results form MySQL

If you read the MySQL manual you might have seen the ORDER BY RAND() to randomize the the rows and using the LIMIT 1 to just take one of the rows.

SELECT name
  FROM random
 ORDER BY RAND()
 LIMIT 1;

The reason that ordering by RAND() can be slow is that you’re forcing the database to actually sort the whole table before returning anything. Just reducing the load to a single table scan is much faster (albeit still somewhat slow).

SELECT name
  FROM random AS r1 JOIN
       (SELECT CEIL(RAND() *
                     (SELECT MAX(id)
                        FROM random)) AS id)
        AS r2
 WHERE r1.id >= r2.id
 ORDER BY r1.id ASC
 LIMIT 1

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