On Sat, 2006-03-04 at 17:34, benifactor wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "benifactor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Robert Cummings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "tedd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "PHP-General" <php-general@lists.php.net>; "Murray @ PlanetThoughtful"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Anthony Ettinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 2:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [PHP] Mysql Rows
>
>
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Robert Cummings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: "tedd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Cc: "PHP-General" <php-general@lists.php.net>; "benifactor"
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Murray @ PlanetThoughtful" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
> > "Anthony Ettinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 9:41 AM
> > Subject: Re: [PHP] Mysql Rows
> >
> >
> > > On Sat, 2006-03-04 at 09:14, tedd wrote:
> > > > planetthoughtful wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >But, too often I've seen people new to database design not liking
> > > > >'gaps' because 'user1' will have a unique id of '1', while 'user2'
> > > > >will have a unique id of '6' because the records associated with
> > > > >unique ids '2' through '5' were deleted during testing, and so on.
> > > > >So, they feel that 'user2' should have a unique id of '2', ignoring
> > > > >the fact that that's not a unique id at all, if you had id '2'
> > > > >associated with another record at some point.
> > > >
> > > > And, Anthony wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >I remember the days where i'd
> > > > >clear a database after testing to keep the auto_increment inline, but
> > > > >eventually, you will get out of sync on that, so it's not a reliable
> > way of
> > > > >keeping a numerical sequence.
> > > >
> > > > Well... I'm one of those people who don't like gaps. I understand
> > > > that if the dB is relational, then you shouldn't be concerned about
> > > > gaps. Gaps are only perceived from a perspective of an artificial
> > > > ordering system -- who knows where the data actually is in memory or
> > > > on disk.
> > > >
> > > > However, when I'm working with a flat dB and want to step through the
> > > > records to do editing, I like the records to be in order based upon
> > > > an "id" (i.e., Record 1, Record 2, Record 3, and so on). I use an
> > > > auto_increment unique "id" for this.
> > > >
> > > > It's not a big problem for me to keep the records in order either.
> > > > Whenever I delete a record, I simply follow with:
> > > >
> > > > $dbQuery = "ALTER TABLE $dbtable ";
> > > > $dbQuery .= "DROP id, ";
> > > > $dbQuery .= "ADD id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,";
> > > > $dbQuery .= "AUTO_INCREMENT = 1";
> > > > $result = mysql_query($dbQuery) or die("2. Could not renumber dB
> > > > $dbQuery" . mysql_error());
> > >
> > > *LOL* I knew those MySQL people shouldn't have made the ALTER TABLE
> > > syntax available to just anyone. Gun --> foot --> *BLAM*. I hope to God
> > > you never get your hands on a real database with millions of entries.
> > >
> >
> > my reasoning for needing the users number in a database is this...
> >
> > i am going to be doing a lottery type thing where i grab a random number
> > between 1 and the result of mysql_num_rows($result)... that is the reason
> > the gaps matter. the while loop didn't work for me so if anyone could
> help
> > me out on how to get this number i would aprreaciate it. thank you in
> > advance.
>
> here is what i tried..
> while ($d = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
> $i = 0;
> while ($d[username] != $user) {
> $i++
> }
> }
Now we can help you...
<?php
$query =
"SELECT "
." id, " // or whatever the id field is called.
." username " // not really needed since you get ID also.
."FROM "
." users "
."ORDER BY "
." RAND() "
."LIMIT "
." 1 ";
?>
Cheers,
Rob.
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