Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks (Post 22945539)

So i have a table that contains a range of columns, some of them fill the entire set of rows, some of them have say, 10 items in the column, while I have 25 rows.

This is the querie that I am using to display the data:



I understand why its only displaying blank fields in some areas of my PHP coding (because its randomly pulling row data that doesnt exist in a column), however, how would I change the above querie to FORCE data to be displayed for a specific column, whether its full or only 1/2 full with data?

Hopefully, that makes sense?

Originally Posted by sarettah (Post 22945556)

If the empty fields are nulls then

Select field-name from table where field-name is no null order by rand() ....

Would work. If there are blank fields that are not null then

Select field-name from table where field-name>'' order by rand() ...

should work

.

Originally Posted by k0nr4d (Post 22945673)

Null and empty are not the same thing. Null is used to refer to nothing and empty is a string with zero length.


SELECT * FROM table WHERE column != '' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks (Post 22945674)

Okay that works, thank you.

Any chance you could explain why for me though? What does that != do that a regular query doesnt?

Originally Posted by k0nr4d (Post 22945679)

!= is a regular query. "!=" is "does not equal". You can use it in PHP as well, it is the opposite of "==" like you'd use in an if statement.
An empty string is not null, it's an empty string.

Originally Posted by k0nr4d (Post 22945679)

!= is a regular query. "!=" is "does not equal". You can use it in PHP as well, it is the opposite of "==" like you'd use in an if statement.
An empty string is not null, it's an empty string.

Originally Posted by ZTT (Post 22945692)

Though if you use != in PHP you'll find that null does equal an empty string.