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

It's a good idea with generating these dates on the fly. However, I do not feel myself comfortable to do this with quite large range so I've ended up with the following solution:

1. Created a table "DatesNumbers" that will hold numbers used for dates calculation:

CREATE TABLE DatesNumbers (
    i MEDIUMINT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (i)
)
COMMENT='Used by Dates view'
;

2. Populated the table using above techniques with numbers from -59999 to 40000. This range will give me dates from 59999 days (~164 years) behind to 40000 days (109 years) ahead:

INSERT INTO DatesNumbers
SELECT 
    a.i + (10 * b.i) + (100 * c.i) + (1000 * d.i) + (10000 * e.i) - 59999 AS i
FROM 
  (SELECT 0 AS i 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) AS a,
  (SELECT 0 AS i 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) AS b,
  (SELECT 0 AS i 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) AS c,
  (SELECT 0 AS i 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) AS d,
  (SELECT 0 AS i 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) AS e
;

3. Created a view "Dates":

SELECT
      i,
      CURRENT_DATE() + INTERVAL i DAY AS Date
FROM
    DatesNumbers

That's it.

• (+) Easy to read queries
• (+) No on the fly numbers generations
• (+) Gives dates in the past and in the future and there is NO UNION in view for this as in this post.
• (+) "In the past only" or "in the future only" dates could be filtered using WHERE i < 0 or WHERE i > 0 (PK)
• (-) 'temporary' table & view is used