Select random items from container

Question

Select random items from container

Bubba Jones 221

I would like to select some documents from one of my containers. The code below compiles but fails on runtime - the Guid.NewGuid() part it used to work on EF core.

    FeedIterator<ForumPost> randomForumPosts =  
        container.GetItemLinqQueryable<ForumPost>().OrderBy(a => Guid.NewGuid()).Take(5).ToFeedIterator<ForumPost>();

After doing some reading I found that there is no intrinsic way of performing a random selection in cosmos. However those posts were pretty dated. Is there a workaround for this or has there been any update since?

Anurag Sharma 17,636 Reputation points

2022-08-02T06:35:59.147+00:00

Hi @Bubba Jones , welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Could you please clarify when you say you want to select random items from one of your documents, do you mean random selection of documents from entire container or random properties from one document?
Bubba Jones 221 Reputation points

2022-08-05T09:05:53.553+00:00

Sorry for the late response. I admit my OP was confusing. I meant a random selection of documents from within an entire container. In the example I posted, I want to select random ForumPost documents from my ForumPost container.
Anurag Sharma 17,636 Reputation points

2022-08-09T06:55:04.74+00:00

Thanks for replying back. I am checking on this and will get back to you at the earliest.