MySQL Alter table, add column with unique random value

Question

I have a table that I added a column called phone - the table also has an id set as a primary key that auto_increments. How can I insert a random value into the phone column, that won't be duplicated. The following UPDATE statement did insert random values, but not all of them unique. Also, I'm not sold I cast the phone field correctly either, but ran into issues when trying to set it as a int(11) w/ the ALTER TABLE command (mainly, it ran correctly, but when adding a row with a new phone number, the inserted value was translated into a different number).

UPDATE Ballot SET phone = FLOOR(50000000 * RAND()) + 1;

Table spec's

+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field      | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id         | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| phone      | varchar(11)  | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| age        | tinyint(3)   | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| test       | tinyint(4)   | NO   |     | 0       |                |
| note       | varchar(100) | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

Answer 1

Try this

UPDATE Ballot SET phone = FLOOR(50000000 * RAND()) * id;

Answer 2

-- tbl_name: Table
-- column_name: Column
-- chars_str: String containing acceptable characters
-- n: Length of the random string
-- dummy_tbl: Not a parameter, leave as is!
UPDATE tbl_name SET column_name = (
  SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(SUBSTRING(chars_str , 1+ FLOOR(RAND()*LENGTH(chars_str)) ,1) SEPARATOR '')
  FROM (SELECT 1 /* UNION SELECT 2 ... UNION SELECT n */) AS dummy_tbl
);

-- Example
UPDATE tickets SET code = (
  SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(SUBSTRING('123abcABC-_$@' , 1+ FLOOR(RAND()*LENGTH('123abcABC-_$@'))     ,1) SEPARATOR '')
  FROM (SELECT 1 UNION SELECT 2 UNION SELECT 3 UNION SELECT 4 UNION SELECT 5) AS dummy_tbl
);

Answer 3

I'd tackle this by generating a (temporary) table containing the numbers in the range you need, then looping through each record in the table you wish to supply with random numbers. Pick a random element from the temp table, update the table with that, and remove it from the temp table. Not beautiful, nor fast.. but easy to develop and easy to test.