How to select randomly with doctrine

Question

Here is how I query my database for some words

$query = $qb->select(\'w\')
    ->from(\'DbEntities\\Entity\\Word\', \'w\')
    ->where(\'w.indiction         


        

Answer 1

Shuffling can be done on the query (array) result, but shuffling does not pick randomly.

In order to pick randomly from an entity I prefer to do this in PHP, which might slow the random picking, but it allows me to keep control of testing what I am doing and makes eventual debugging easier.

The example below puts all IDs from the entity into an array, which I can then use to "random-treat" in php.

public function getRandomArt($nbSlotsOnPage)
{
    $qbList=$this->createQueryBuilder('a');

    // get all the relevant id's from the entity
    $qbList ->select('a.id')
            ->where('a.publicate=true')
            ;       
    // $list is not a simple list of values, but an nested associative array
    $list=$qbList->getQuery()->getScalarResult();       

    // get rid of the nested array from ScalarResult
    $rawlist=array();
    foreach ($list as $keyword=>$value)
        {
            // entity id's have to figure as keyword as array_rand() will pick only keywords - not values
            $id=$value['id'];
            $rawlist[$id]=null;
        }

    $total=min($nbSlotsOnPage,count($rawlist));
    // pick only a few (i.e.$total)
    $keylist=array_rand($rawlist,$total);

    $qb=$this->createQueryBuilder('aw');
    foreach ($keylist as $keyword=>$value)
        {
            $qb ->setParameter('keyword'.$keyword,$value)
                ->orWhere('aw.id = :keyword'.$keyword)
            ;
        }

    $result=$qb->getQuery()->getResult();

    // if mixing the results is also required (could also be done by orderby rand();
    shuffle($result);

    return $result;
}