PHP MySQL Rotating Ads

[stevendeeds]

Hey doods. How should one go about creating rotating ads on a site using php/mysql? Just for clarity, I’m talking a random ad on load, not like.. some javascript that will change the ad while the user is on the page…

[dhechler]

@TT_Mark has it right.

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1;

[stevendeeds]

Thanks @dhechler , Thanks @TT_Mark

[dhechler]

@TT_MARK why would you never SELECT * ? If i need every single piece of data from a row, then I would SELECT *

[dhechler]

@TT_MARK straight from dev.mysql.com

A select list consisting only of a single unqualified * can be used as shorthand to select all columns from all tables:



SELECT * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ...

[dhechler]

@TT_MARK I understand that you dont ALWAYS want to select everything, but your statement was that you should NEVER select everything. I was (and am) disagreeing with that. I have plenty of times where I need to get all columns out to either display or cache as a session variable.

[ddliu]

@TT_Mark In fact “ORDER BY RAND” is very slow if performance counts.

Here is a post on it: http://akinas.com/pages/en/blog/mysql_random_row/

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