How does the use of MySQL RAND() in PHP queries affect the retrieval of data and potential duplicates?

When using MySQL RAND() in PHP queries, it can lead to the retrieval of duplicate records as the random ordering may not be truly random. To avoid duplicates, you can add an additional ORDER BY clause with a unique identifier column to ensure a more reliable random ordering. 

$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY RAND(), id_column LIMIT 10";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Fetch and display the results
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    echo $row['column_name'] . "<br>";
}

Keywords

MySQL RAND() PHP queries data retrieval duplicates

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