Order randomly in MySQL with a random value column?

Let us first create a table. After that we will create a new random value column and order the record randomly:

mysql> create table DemoTable (    StudentId int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,    StudentName varchar(20) ); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.57 sec)

Following is the query to insert some records in the table using insert command:

mysql> insert into DemoTable(StudentName) values('Larry'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.20 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable(StudentName) values('Sam'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.14 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable(StudentName) values('Mike'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.34 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable(StudentName) values('Carol'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.13 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable(StudentName) values('Robert'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.14 sec) mysql> insert into DemoTable(StudentName) values('Chris'); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.14 sec)

Following is the query to display records from the table using select statement:

mysql> select *from DemoTable;

This will produce the following output

+-----------+-------------+ | StudentId | StudentName | +-----------+-------------+ |         1 | Larry       | |         2 | Sam         | |         3 | Mike        | |         4 | Carol       | |         5 | Robert      | |         6 | Chris       |   +-----------+-------------+ 6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Here is the query to order by random fields. We have created a new random field here:

mysql> SELECT * FROM (SELECT StudentName, RAND()+1 AS randomRecord FROM DemoTable ) tbl ORDER BY RandomRecord DESC;

This will produce the following output

+-------------+--------------------+ | StudentName | RandomRecord       | +-------------+--------------------+ | Carol | 1.8973721451101566 | | Chris | 1.7821308670399065 | | Mike | 1.4640037673190271 | | Larry | 1.4134691557041081 | | Sam | 1.1408822407395414 | | Robert | 1.0948494543273461 | +-------------+--------------------+ 6 rows in set (0.00 sec)