Ideas for showing collection items in random order?

tkimnguyen · May 9, 2015, 7:40pm

[Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be a good category for this post... does this mean I should ask this on stackoverflow?]

I was looking at how to have a collection display items in random order, but the batching feature complicates things: we would have to establish a random order of all items, then show batches of that. Would the random ordering of all items have to be done per user, per visit? Would that random ordering be different from that seen by other users? What happens on reload? Would we store a random ordering as a cookie? How would this work with cacheing.

If it's not per user or per visit, how often should the random order be regenerated on the server?

github.com

plone/plone.app.collection/blob/master/plone/app/collection/collection.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from AccessControl import ClassSecurityInfo
from OFS.ObjectManager import ObjectManager
from plone.app.collection.field import QueryField
from plone.app.contentlisting.interfaces import IContentListing
from Products.Archetypes.Widget import QueryStringWidget
from Products.ATContentTypes.content import document, schemata
from Products.Archetypes import atapi
from Products.Archetypes.atapi import (BooleanField,
                                       BooleanWidget,
                                       IntegerField,
                                       LinesField,
                                       IntegerWidget,
                                       InAndOutWidget,
                                       StringField,
                                       StringWidget)
from Products.CMFCore.permissions import ModifyPortalContent, View
from Products.CMFCore.utils import getToolByName
from zope.interface import implementer

This file has been truncated. show original

datakurre · May 10, 2015, 5:41pm

As random generator could be made deterministic with a seed, maybe it would be possible to add the seed into batch query string parameters? (Although, that would probably need touching also the batching package[s].)

rafaeltcc · May 19, 2017, 4:23pm

Hi @tkimnguyen,

Have you found a solution to this? I have the same use case. I need a collection to show 1 item of a category, randomly, changing after every refresh.

Thanks,

Rafael

tkimnguyen · May 19, 2017, 7:48pm

I haven't looked further at how to implement this in collections, but in the past I've written JavaScript that chose random items for display (e.g. choosing from one of many possible main images on landing pages).

hvelarde · May 19, 2017, 10:17pm

this is how we implemented such feature in the collection tile of collective.cover:

github.com

collective/collective.cover/blob/master/src/collective/cover/tiles/collection.py#L127-L131


results = obj.results(batch=False)
if self.data.get('random', False):
    if size > len(results):
        size = len(results)
    return random.sample(results, size)

tkimnguyen · May 20, 2017, 3:48pm

I filed this feature request... https://github.com/plone/Products.CMFPlone/issues/2056

Let's see if it gets shot down