Randomize and Ditto 2.0.3 - also 2.1b3 tested SOLVED - Was MySQL 5.0.51 issue

admin note This was an issue with MySQL version 5.0.51x

Hi, I am new today to MODx and have got this far today, FTR it’s so much better than anything I’ve used before!

I am using ditto to produce one testimonial or quote on the front page of a site.



This ditto call is in the template for the page.

The results are not being randomized. I have tried increasing the &display to say 5 to see whether ditto just retrieves 1 item but it didn’t make any difference.

I may be doing something very stupid. but I just cant see it.

Incidentally when using ditto in debug mode you cant access the debug links when SEO is enabled. Also with multiple ditto’s they don’t seem to work either - this may just be my set up of course.

Thanks -

You might want to grab the latest development version from ditto.modxcms.com ... i vaguely recall there being a bug with randomization in earlier versions.

Thanks Ryan - got myself 2.1b3 - but things still not working....

’cause I new to all this I guess I dont need any further declarations in my template to get this to work? As it seems to work, albeit without the rand. I guess I dont....

I’m using 2.1b3 with this snippet call

and it works perfectly. I used the &id parameter because I have another Ditto call displaying the latest news item on the same page.

I am thinking perhaps the problem is my testing installation....

as ditto randomize uses mySQL’s RAND() perhaps there is a problem with the version of MySQL I am using - 5.0.51 on windows.

I am going to look in to this!

I solved this problem - below applies to Windows version, I dont know about others.

The current release of MySQL that is included with XAMPP seems to have RAND() issues which is utilised for &randomize in ditto.

XAMPP ships 5.0.51 with current release I downloaded and simply installed over with version 5.0.45.

Everything ok now.

If you do this remember to back-up first and ignore security warnings in the configuration. The last step will probably throw up password errors with the root acount. Just ignore this.

Thanks fot the help from all.

The problem I have with Randomize is that it seems to ignore the cache. It seems it will randomize after 15 minutes. I put a meta tag "nocache" on the template. That didn’t work. I made sure each quote and did you know doc had the Cache? selected and Empty Cache? selected. My code is identical to Susan’s but.... it’s like 15 minutes before I get a new quote and did you know. Is it because I have two randomize calls on the same page?? I don’t think so because they have different parents.

I have mysql 5.0.22 and the randomize just throws up the first document my call is

[!Ditto? &tpl=`extra-content` &startID=`977` display=`1` &randomize=’1’  !]

Doh I just noticed that &randomize=’1’ should be tickmarks, now who feels like a muppet

I finally got randomize to work. The key for me was to have a single template. If you have the same randomize call in 2 or more templates, the templates don’t "talk" to each other to find out what the last random bit was, they just throw it up there regardless.