Get a list of dates between two dates

Question

Using standard mysql functions is there a way to write a query that will return a list of days between two dates.

eg given 2009-01-01 and 2009-01-13 it would return

Answer 1

Elegant solution using new recursive (Common Table Expressions) functionality in MariaDB >= 10.3 and MySQL >= 8.0.

WITH RECURSIVE t as (
    select '2019-01-01' as dt
  UNION
    SELECT DATE_ADD(t.dt, INTERVAL 1 DAY) FROM t WHERE DATE_ADD(t.dt, INTERVAL 1 DAY) <= '2019-04-30'
)
select * FROM t;

The above returns a table of dates between '2019-01-01' and '2019-04-30'.

Answer 2

I am using Server version: 5.7.11-log MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Now we will solve this in a simple way.

I have created a table named "datetable"

mysql> describe datetable;
+---------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field   | Type    | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| colid   | int(11) | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| coldate | date    | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+---------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

now, wee will see the inserted records within.

mysql> select * from datetable;
+-------+------------+
| colid | coldate    |
+-------+------------+
|   101 | 2015-01-01 |
|   102 | 2015-05-01 |
|   103 | 2016-01-01 |
+-------+------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

and here our query to fetch records within two dates rather than those dates.

mysql> select * from datetable where coldate > '2015-01-01' and coldate < '2016-01-01';
+-------+------------+
| colid | coldate    |
+-------+------------+
|   102 | 2015-05-01 |
+-------+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

hope this would help many ones.

Answer 3

Borrowing an idea from this answer, you can set up a table with 0 through 9 and use that to generate your list of dates.

CREATE TABLE num (i int);
INSERT INTO num (i) VALUES (0), (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9);

select affffdate('2009-01-01', numlist.id) as `date` from
(SELECT n1.i + n10.i*10 + n100.i*100 AS id
   FROM num n1 cross join num as n10 cross join num as n100) as numlist
where affffdate('2009-01-01', numlist.id) <= '2009-01-13';

This will allow you to generate a list of up to 1000 dates. If you need to go larger, you can add another cross join to the inner query.

Answer 4

This solution is working with MySQL 5.0
Create a table - mytable.
The schema does not material. What matters is the number of rows in it.
So, you can keep just one column of type INT with 10 rows, values - 1 to 10.

SQL:

set @tempDate=date('2011-07-01') - interval 1 day;
select
date(@tempDate := (date(@tempDate) + interval 1 day)) as theDate
from mytable x,mytable y
group by theDate
having theDate <= '2011-07-31';

Limitation: The maximum number of dates returned by above query will be
(rows in mytable)*(rows in mytable) = 10*10 = 100.

You can increase this range by changing form part in sql:
from mytable x,mytable y, mytable z
So, the range be 10*10*10 =1000 and so on.

Answer 5

Create a stored procedure which takes two parameters a_begin and a_end. Create a temporary table within it called t, declare a variable d, assign a_begin to d, and run a WHILE loop INSERTing d into t and calling ADDDATE function to increment the value d. Finally SELECT * FROM t.

Answer 6

For Access (or any SQL language)

1. Create one table that has 2 fields, we'll call this table tempRunDates:
   --Fields fromDate and toDate
   --Then insert only 1 record, that has the start date and the end date.

2. Create another table: Time_Day_Ref
   --Import a list of dates (make list in excel is easy) into this table.
   --The field name in my case is Greg_Dt, for Gregorian Date
   --I made my list from jan 1 2009 through jan 1 2020.

3. Run the query:

   SELECT Time_Day_Ref.GREG_DT
   FROM tempRunDates, Time_Day_Ref
   WHERE Time_Day_Ref.greg_dt>=tempRunDates.fromDate And greg_dt<=tempRunDates.toDate;
   

Easy!