Random Image Generator

On my website I had been using a third party Javascript random image generator which scrolled through my /images folder and displayed a random image. I found this to be an inelegant solution. So I decided to go native, so to speak, and develop a simple solution using MySQL and PHP.

Basically, I have a number of tables in my database, all of which contain a couple of common fields:

• IMAGE - Stores the directory and name of the Image.

• URL - Stores the URL of the page on which the image appears.

I achieved what I wanted with a couple of very simple steps:

Created a View to bring all the IMAGE and URL information into one place:

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW IMAGE_VW (IMAGE, URL) AS 
SELECT IMAGE, URL FROM TABLEA
UNION
SELECT IMAGE, URL FROM TABLEB; 

I then implemented the following SQL and PHP code:

<?php

$queryx  = "SELECT IMAGE, URL FROM IMAGES_VW ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
$resultx = mysql_query($queryx);

while($row = mysql_fetch_row($resultx))
{
    $IMAGE = $row[0];
    $URL = $row[1];
 
    echo "<a href=$URL><img src=$IMAGE></a>";

}

?>