Random record from mysql database with CodeIgniter

Codeigniter provides the ability to order your results by 'RANDOM' when you run a query. For instance

function get_random_page()
{
    $this->db->order_by('id', 'RANDOM');
    or
    $this->db->order_by('rand()');
    $this->db->limit(1);
    $query = $this->db->get('pages');
    return $query->result_array();

}

I've used this before and found it to work fine. Hope that helps


I don't know about codeigniter, but getting a random dataset is

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

The relevant part is "ORDER BY RAND()", obviously.