Ordering by random

[4bo]

as postgres supports order by random(), please add similar functionality to PostgREST

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Edit: Similar requests:

• https://github.com/orgs/supabase/discussions/14609

[wolfgangwalther]

as postgres supports [...], please add similar functionality to PostgREST

PostgreSQL supports a lot of stuff, that PostgREST doesn't. Adding full support for everything that PostgreSQL does is certainly not achievable. I wouldn't consider this a valid argument for supporting anything.

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[...] order by random() [...]

We can look at this from two different angles:

• We have not implemented calling arbitrary functions in filters or order parameters. If we implemented that, calling random should work, too. However, I don't see us implementing generic function support for a variety of reasons, one of them the inability to use indexes and the problem of DoS attacks.
• random() feels like kind of a special case, because it does not depend on any other column - so there is not really a point of using an index at all. Not sure how many other expressions that don't depend on any columns make sense to use, but random() certainly does.

In any case, I think you can already use it right now with a virtual / computed column. Just define it like this:

create table my_table (...);

create function random(my_table) returns double precision
language sql as 'select random()';

You can then use it as a column on this endpoint:

GET /my_table?order=random

You could probably generalize the function to take any as the argument type, to allow this for all your endpoints.

[steve-chavez]

order by random() will always cause a full table scan, so I don't think we'll support it.

Supporting TABLESAMPLE sounds more likely to happen.

More details at: https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/blog/tablesample-and-other-methods-for-getting-random-tuples/

[steve-chavez]

TABLESAMPLE seems a bit complex to expose to clients.

Since doing

create function random(anyelement) returns double precision
language sql as 'select random()';

Is pretty simple and makes random available for all tables, we could turn this into a how-to in docs.

This depends on https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest/issues/2442, because we'd need to be able to restrict to which columns the order by can be applied.

[steve-chavez]

Similarly to the estimated count, perhaps we can apply the order by random() for low counts and then TABLESAMPLE for higher counts.

We could do it through an Accept: application/vnd.pgrst.random+json.

Edit: Maybe a header isn't right here as different media types can support random.

[steve-chavez]

pg16 has a new any_value aggregate: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/functions-aggregate.html#FUNCTIONS-AGGREGATE-TABLE

Add aggregate function ANY_VALUE() which returns any value from a set

Haven't tried it yet but seems it could be used in conjunction with custom media types to get a random row for any relation.

[wolfgangwalther]

Add aggregate function ANY_VALUE() which returns any value from a set

Haven't tried it yet but seems it could be used in conjunction with custom media types to get a random row for any relation.

It does not return a random row, however. It returns "a" row. IIRC, the current implementation is that it returns the "first" rows it finds. That's certainly not going to be a true random.

[steve-chavez]

IIRC, the current implementation is that it returns the "first" rows it finds. That's certainly not going to be a true random.

Ah, ok. Then it's like first on: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/First/last_(aggregate)

[wolfgangwalther]

Ah, ok. Then it's like first on

Nope, it's not, because this is only an implementation detail and not guaranteed to stay that way. You can't rely on it.