RAND and RANDOM in Simply Rails 2

[atetlaw]

A common problem that appears in the book support queue for Simply Rails 2 is the issue of randomizing the story link.

In the book the code is:

class StoriesController < ApplicationController
def index
  @story = Story.find(:first, :order => 'RANDOM()')
end
end

But a lot of readers claim it should be:

class StoriesController < ApplicationController
def index
  @story = Story.find(:first, :order => 'RAND()')
end
end

'RANDOM()' is correct for SQLite3 (which the book uses) and 'RAND()' is correct for MySQL.

I've found a patch that was submitted recently to deal with this very issue:

http://rails.lighthouseapp.com/proje...#ticket-1274-1

Hope that helps.