Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

Before I forget, I had to jot this quick discovery down. While not documented in the CakePHP manual (at least not anywhere I could find), it is possible to sort your associated models by RAND(). Maybe not earth shattering news to some people, but I find it interesting and handy.

So in your model file where you specify your association arrays, under the "order by" field you'll simply put "RAND()" instead of "name ASC" or "id ASC" etc.

Why on earth would you want to randomize the order of your associated models? I had to for a trivia application I was doing for work. I had a list of answers associated with questions.

So now the list of answer choices is in random order rather than by id or alphabetical. This makes it a little different for each user or each time you take the trivia. Makes it more challenging perhaps or not as easy to cheat. Also with the way the answers were originally ordered, the correct answer was showing up in the same spot over and over.

Sometimes the need to randomize is there and this is a very easy (quick) way of doing so in CakePHP.

Update: In case you didn't read the comments in this post, order by rand is not effecient and as I've read not as random as some other methods you can use. So order by rand may only be useful for you in some situtations. As with everything in the programming world there are many many ways to do things, just be sure to weigh out all your options and choose the best one.

   

Before I forget, I had to jot this quick discovery down. While not documented in the CakePHP manual (at least not anywhere I could find), it is possible to sort your associated models by RAND(). Maybe not earth shattering news to some people, but I find it interesting and handy.

So in your model file where you specify your association arrays, under the "order by" field you'll simply put "RAND()" instead of "name ASC" or "id ASC" etc.

Why on earth would you want to randomize the order of your associated models? I had to for a trivia application I was doing for work. I had a list of answers associated with questions.

So now the list of answer choices is in random order rather than by id or alphabetical. This makes it a little different for each user or each time you take the trivia. Makes it more challenging perhaps or not as easy to cheat. Also with the way the answers were originally ordered, the correct answer was showing up in the same spot over and over.

Sometimes the need to randomize is there and this is a very easy (quick) way of doing so in CakePHP.

Update: In case you didn't read the comments in this post, order by rand is not effecient and as I've read not as random as some other methods you can use. So order by rand may only be useful for you in some situtations. As with everything in the programming world there are many many ways to do things, just be sure to weigh out all your options and choose the best one.