Hi all.
I've built my website using SS and extending it with gallery module, customized on my need, and two other simple modules created by myself.
In my structure, I choose to put a random-images area in each page of mine whole site. In this area I would show an html ul that contains images randomly taken from my whole image collection (GalleryPage 1, GalleryPage 2, ... ,GalleryPage N).
The problem is I cannot figure out how to start creating the controller function code in my page class.
My first idea was randomly querying single-imagefile table (I guess it's 'File' table...), place result in a DataObject and then control it via template. Now, how can I code these first two steps?
If there's another way, more correct and more simple than this, please share it with me.

Thanks in advance.

bye

Thanks UncleCheese.

I tried this solution and it works fine, but it's suited for choosing only one pic at a time and only in one gallery. I would like to have a list of images, browsable with "control function" in the template, created by adding, for instance, one image from gallery-one folder and one image from gallery-two folder...

ty. Cya

Alright then...

Let's focus on the context.

This is my template code:

<ul>
<% control GalleryList %>
<li><a rel="shadowbox[galleryTest];options={slideshowDelay: 4,counterType: 'default'}" href="$ViewLink" title="$Title" caption="$Content"><img src="$ThumbnailURL" ></a></li>
<% end_control %>
</ul>

It has to show 5 random images. In order to achieve this, I think GalleryList function must return a value in this way:

function GalleryList() {
$photos = DataObject::get_one("GalleryPage");
return ($photos->GalleryItems(5));
}

This script, at the moment, returns first 5 images from my first imagegallery. I want to edit this piece of code mantaining my template as it is now.
Any ideas?

Both solutions came from you would force me to make a massive editing of my template source but I'd like to avoid this...
I would like also to build a solution that works out of the box, without the necessity of searching in my database for setting up right parent ID in my sql query every time I add a new gallery.

Wow. We got it!

I had to edit something but now I m quite at the end of this quest.
At the moment I have N random images showed in my random images area in every page of my site. (N is a template-driven value. Images are taken, at the moment, only from the first gallery. Now I'll work for making this script randomly chooses images among all available galleries)

I had to replicate and edit Items and GalleryItems functions (->AllItems and AllGalleryItems) in GalleryPage.php in order to make a selection of all images instead of a limited one. (I deleted all $limit entries in php and SQL code).
Then my function became

function RandomGalleryItems($list_dim) {
      $photos = DataObject::get_one("GalleryPage");
      $items = $photos->AllGalleryItems()->toArray();
      $random_images = new DataObjectSet();
      
      while($random_images->Count() <= ($list_dim-1) ) {
         $random_index = rand(0,sizeof($items)-1);
         $random_images->push($items[$random_index]);
      }
      
      return $random_images;
   }

and my template became

<ul>
<% control RandomGalleryItems(5) %>
<li><a rel="shadowbox[galleryTest];options={slideshowDelay: 4,counterType: 'default'}" href="$ViewLink" title="$Title" caption="$Content"><img src="$ThumbnailURL" ></a></li>
<% end_control %>
</ul>

Thanks a lot, UncleCheese.