generate days from date range

Question

I would like to run a query like

select ... as days where `date` is between \'2010-01-20\' and \'2010-01-24\'

And return data like:

Answer 1

Here is another variation using views:

CREATE VIEW digits AS
  SELECT 0 AS digit UNION ALL
  SELECT 1 UNION ALL
  SELECT 2 UNION ALL
  SELECT 3 UNION ALL
  SELECT 4 UNION ALL
  SELECT 5 UNION ALL
  SELECT 6 UNION ALL
  SELECT 7 UNION ALL
  SELECT 8 UNION ALL
  SELECT 9;

CREATE VIEW numbers AS
  SELECT
    ones.digit + tens.digit * 10 + hundreds.digit * 100 + thousands.digit * 1000 AS number
  FROM
    digits as ones,
    digits as tens,
    digits as hundreds,
    digits as thousands;

CREATE VIEW dates AS
  SELECT
    SUBDATE(CURRENT_DATE(), number) AS date
  FROM
    numbers;

And then you can simply do (see how elegant it is?):

SELECT
  date
FROM
  dates
WHERE
  date BETWEEN '2010-01-20' AND '2010-01-24'
ORDER BY
  date

Update

It is worth noting that you will only be able to generate past dates starting from the current date. If you want to generate any kind of dates range (past, future, and in between), you will have to use this view instead:

CREATE VIEW dates AS
  SELECT
    SUBDATE(CURRENT_DATE(), number) AS date
  FROM
    numbers
  UNION ALL
  SELECT
    ADDDATE(CURRENT_DATE(), number + 1) AS date
  FROM
    numbers;