Browse Random Items

I’am looking for a solution to display a random sort order when browsing the content of a collection.
Thanks for your help

Just to make sure I’m seeing the issue correctly, are you talking about a page for the Collection that shows some of the items in that collection, with a URL like Omeka/collections/show/4? Or something with a URL like Omeka/items/browse?collection=4?

The solutions might be similar, but knowing exactly which kind of page will be helpful. It might be something that can be addressed in a theme modification, or might need a plugin to change the queries, depending on which page type you want to modify. It’s the difference of whether it starts with items or collections.

something with a URL like Omeka/items/browse?collection=4 - or without the collection like in “Omeka/items/browse” - Thanks a lot and kind regards

One way at it is with a very basic plugin that uses the browse_params filter. Put this code in the plugins folder, in a directory called RandomItems, in a file in that directory called RandomItemsPlugin.php

This will make all items browse queries be random. If we need to distinguish between different pages, we can sort that out.

<?php

class RandomItemsPlugin extends Omeka_Plugin_AbstractPlugin
{
    public $_filters = array (
            'items_browse_params',
            );
    
    public function filterItemsBrowseParams($params)
    {
        $params['sort_field'] = 'random';
        return $params;
    }
}

Wow, this was exactly what I wanted it works fine. Thank you so much for your help!!! Kind regards from Berlin.

Is there a simple way to make this plugin only sort randomly for the view Omeka/items/browse? As is it makes all browse queries random. I’m imagining users seeing a random order on the main browse page but also being able to sort by things like title, date, etc.

I just realized I can use Omeka/items/browse?&sort=random to sort randomly. Unfortunately, this appears to sort in the same random order whenever the page is refreshed so I’m still searching for a way to make it newly random each time the page is visited.

?sort_field=random should get you random sorting that differs every time.

Fantastic, that solves my problem precisely. Thank you!