Loop 1 user randomly

Question

At the moment I am using wp_user_query to loop users from a specific role(leden) on a webpage. For the overview page this is working fine, but on my homepage I want to feature one random user.

I was a little bit astonished to find out there is no random order parameter, nor a parameter to put a limit on the items looped. The maximum items looped (similar to posts_per_page) is not the problem, i can make this work by putting a $i=1 and if($i == 1) variable in my loop to make it stop after one user.

But for the random function.. Am I overviewing something ? ... :/

Does anyone have any idea how to make this work nicely?

Thanks in advance and sorry for my bad english.

Answer 1

I found a realy great solition here. !!

It is a function that kindof 'adds' 'orderby' => 'rand' as a parameter. What it does it that when someone uses that parameter, the function will query the database using regular MySQL, where random is always possible :)

The function:

// put this in your functions.php
add_filter('pre_user_query', function(&$query) {
   if($query->query_vars["orderby"] == 'rand') {
       $query->query_orderby = 'ORDER by RAND()';
   }
});

The loop will be something like:

// Query will look like this:
$args = array('orderby' => 'rand', 'number' => 5);

$users = WP_User_Query($args);