Print a random row from a mysql query

Question

I was looking for a way of creating a collaborative translation widget. So I have a mysql database and table (called translations), and a little script to allow users to translate one page at a time.

But I'm not quite convinced with my script. I don't think it's efficient enough. First, the mysql gets all the rows with the empty 'en' column, and then a single one of them is showed by screen through a while. Is there any other way of doing this? This is the code:

//Retrieve all the data from the "translations" table
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM translations WHERE en IS NULL OR en=''") or die(mysql_error());

$Randnum=rand(0,mysql_num_rows($result)-1); //Gets a random number between 0 and the maximum number of rows
$i=0;   //Start to 0
while($Col = mysql_fetch_array($result))  //While there are rows to evaluate
    {
    if ($i==$Randnum)
        {
        echo "\"".$Col['es']."\"<br><br>Translate it to English: <br>";
        }
    $i++;
    }

I was looking for something like "echo $Col[$Randnum]['es']" or "echo $Col.$Randnum['es']" instead of using the whole while loop to print a single random row. How can I implement this? If it's just a matter of optimization. If you could come with an script or idea to assign to $Col just ONE row with a random number and the empty 'en' col, that'd be even better! (I think it's not possible this last bit). The 'en' row is text so I don't know how to implement other methods I've seen around as they use number with ORDER BY.

Answer 1

You can use ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1 in your query to fetch a single random row from the database.

Answer 2

Make it at query side

SELECT * FROM translations WHERE en IS NULL OR en='' ORDER BY rand() LIMIT 0,1