Generating a series of dates [duplicate]

Solution 1:

if you're in a situation like me where creating temporary tables is prohibited, and setting variables is also not allowed, but you want to generate a list of dates in a specific period, say current year to do some aggregation, use this

select * from 
(select adddate('1970-01-01',t4*10000 + t3*1000 + t2*100 + t1*10 + t0) gen_date from
 (select 0 t0 union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9) t0,
 (select 0 t1 union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9) t1,
 (select 0 t2 union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9) t2,
 (select 0 t3 union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9) t3,
 (select 0 t4 union select 1 union select 2 union select 3 union select 4 union select 5 union select 6 union select 7 union select 8 union select 9) t4) v
where gen_date between '2017-01-01' and '2017-12-31'

Solution 2:

I think having a calendar table is a good idea; you can gain a lot of reporting and query functionality, especially when filling sparse data ranges.

I found this article with what seems to be a good example.