When implementing a feature to display a random selection of texts from a database table in PHP, what alternative approaches could be considered instead of using ORDER BY RAND()?

Using ORDER BY RAND() can be inefficient for large databases as it requires the database to generate a random number for each row and then sort them. An alternative approach could be to fetch all the rows from the database table, shuffle them in PHP, and then select a random subset of texts. This way, the randomization is done in PHP rather than in the database query.

// Fetch all texts from the database table
$query = "SELECT text FROM texts_table";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

$texts = [];
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    $texts[] = $row['text'];
}

// Shuffle the texts array
shuffle($texts);

// Select a random subset of texts
$random_texts = array_rand($texts, 5);

// Display the random texts
foreach ($random_texts as $index) {
    echo $texts[$index] . "<br>";
}