Setting a drupal view to a random page number - drupal

Question

I have views 2 installed and I have created a view that is displayed in the front page.
The view displays some page links ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ... etc). I want to know if it's possible to make the view start at a random page instead of always starting at page 1.
Note: I don't want to randomize the display I really just want to randomize the page it loads.
Thanks
Possible Solution:
In the views_pre_execute hook I used this:
$view->query->pager->set_current_page([random value]);
I am not sure I can determine the number of total pages in the pager at this time but I am going to keep investigating (The $view object given in the hook has tons of properties with arrays and other objects which makes this complicated)

Answer 1

I do not know how to do this from the Views UI, but you should be able to achieve this using one of the views module hooks, in this case probably hook_views_pre_execute. Unfortunately, the documentation for these is practically non existing, so you'd need to implement the hook in a custom module and inspect the passed in view object via the debugger (or print, var_dump, etc. statements).
You should look for $view->pager['current_page'], which you can set to a random page. Unfortunately, if I read the code correctly, the count query that determines the possible number of pages is not yet run at this point, so you'll either have to use a 'best guess', or come up with a different way to determine the proper range to select from...
NOTE: This is in no way meant as an 'authoritative' answer - just a pointer where I'd start looking, since nobody else has answered this so far. I might well be missing a more obvious/easy solution :/

Answer 2

Another option would be to randomize the entries in your views. So your page would always be page 1 but it achieves your objective of seeing something different every time come on your site.
In your sort criteria (in the Global Group) add
Global: Random -- Randomize the display order.
(Inspired by suggestion at http://mydrupal.com/random_node_or_front_page_in_drupal_like_stumbleupon )

Answer 3

I have just created a custom pager that goes automatically to last page and I think it is related to what your are trying to do :
In project.info :
files[] = plugins/views_plugin_pager_last.inc
In project.module :
function cvoxm_views_plugins(){
return array(
'pager' => array(
'last' => array(
'title' => t('Paged output, full pager and last by default'),
'short title' => t('Full & Last'),
'help' => t('Paged output, full Drupal style and last by default'),
'handler' => 'views_plugin_pager_last',
'help topic' => 'pager-last',
'uses options' => TRUE,
),
)
);
}
And the content of plugins/views_plugin_pager_last.inc is :
class views_plugin_pager_last extends views_plugin_pager_full {
function pre_execute(&$query) {
if(!isset($_GET['page'])){ // TODO: Should use pager_id
// Go to last page
$this->set_current_page($this->get_total_items() / $this->get_items_per_page() - 1 );
$this->query(); // Rebuild query
$this->update_page_info(); // Update info
}
}
}