Setup: Joomla website on LAMP stack
I have a MySQL table containing some records, these are queried by a simple SELECT on
the Joomla article, as pasted below. This specific Joomla website has Caching turned on in Joomla's Global Configuration. I need to randomize
the order in which I display
the resultset, each time
the page is loaded.
Regular php/mysql would offer me two approaches for this:
1. use 'order by RAND()' or any of a number of methods to allow a SELECT query to return reasonably random results.
2. once php gets
the result from
the SELECT into an array, shuffle
the array to get a reasonably random order of array items.
However, as this Joomla instance has Caching turned ON in its Global Configuration, either of
the above approaches fails.
The first time I load
the page
the order is randomized, however any further reloads do not cause
the order to change, as
the page is delivered from cache.
The instant
the Cache is disabled, both approaches (shuffle/order by rand) work perfectly. What am I missing? How do I override
the Global Cache for this specific article? A very simple requirement, that is met by both php and mysql reasonably well, is blocked by
the Joomla Cache that I cannot turn off.
The php that returns results from
the database.
<pre>
$db = JFactory::getDBO();
$select = "SELECT id FROM jos_mytable;"; //order by RAND()
$db->setQuery($select);
echo $db->getQuery(); //Show me
the Query!
$rows = $db->loadObjectList();
//shuffle($rows);
foreach($rows as $row) {
echo "$row->id";
}
