How to Generate a Date Series in MySQL Like PostgreSQL's generate_series()?

Simulating PostgreSQL’s generate_series() function in MySQL

PostgreSQL's generate_series() function is often used to generate numeric sequences. However, MySQL has no direct equivalent of this function. This article explores how to generate similar sequences in MySQL, especially when you need to join with all dates of the year.

The following code snippet provides a solution. It uses a simple and effective method to generate a date range from a specified start date to a target end date. Here’s how it works:

1. Initialize user-defined variable @num to -1, used as a counter.
2. Use a subquery to increment any_table by 1 for each row in @num. The design of this loop is based on the number of lines in any_table, ensuring that the resulting range is not truncated.
3. Add incrementing @num to the starting date 2011-1-1, generating a new date for each iteration.
4. Use date_format() to format the calculated date to get the desired date string.
5. Finally, use limit 365 to limit the range to 365 days (or 366 if leap years are taken into account).

With this approach, you can efficiently generate a date sequence and join it with an existing table to perform analysis or calculations based on a complete temporal data set.

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