MySQL: How to retrieve a random row or multiple random rows?

Question

I have a MySQL database table that stores the URLs of photos. I need to pull 5 random records from the database of a particular type. I can pull 5 records like this:

SELECT Photos.* 
FROM Photos 
WHERE Photos.Type_ID = 4 
LIMIT 5

Now I need help trying to figure out how to pull different records every time. How can I retrieve random rows from this result set?

Answer 1

You can use ORDER BY RAND() to get random rows in your query.

Answer 2

SELECT Photos.* 
FROM Photos 
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 5