SQL command to Insert a range of years into a table - mysql

Question

I am very new toSQL and am creating a basic database for a Car Dealership. I have a table "Years" that I need to hold a range of years (1950 - 2014).
Instead of
INSERT INTO 'Years' ('year') ("1950");
INSERT INTO 'Years' ('year') ("1951");
INSERT INTO 'Years' ('year') ("1952");
etc, etc...
Is there an easier way to populate the table?

Answer 1

Apart from the disscussing the necessity of such a table for your application the task of pre-populating tables on MySQL side can be solved in several ways.
First and fastest is to do it in one statement utilizing a tally(numbers) table that can be persisted in your db or generate it on the fly as in following example
INSERT INTO years (`year`)
SELECT 1950 + q.n - 1
FROM
(
SELECT a.N + b.N * 10 + 1 n
FROM
(SELECT 0 AS N 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) a
,(SELECT 0 AS N 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) b
ORDER BY n
) q
WHERE q.n <= 2014 - 1950 + 1
The subquery generates a sequence of numbers from 1 to 100. If you need ranges that span more than 100 years then you can adjust it or if you do a lot such queries then you can substitute it with a persisted tally(numbers) table.
Here is SQLFiddle demo
Second approach is to create a stored procedure that uses LOOP and uses prepared statement
DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE populate_years(IN _start_year INT, IN _end_year INT)
BEGIN
PREPARE stmt FROM 'INSERT INTO years (year) VALUES(?)';
SET #y = _start_year;
START TRANSACTION;
WHILE #y <= _end_year DO
EXECUTE stmt USING #y;
SET #y = #y + 1;
END WHILE;
COMMIT;
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
END$$
DELIMITER ;
Here is SQLFiddle demo

Answer 2

You should rethink your code, you will never need a table like that... whatever you are doing with that table surely could be done without it.
If you still want to create the table you have to use a loop.
For example if you are using php:
for ($i = 1950; $i <= 2014; $i++){
mysqli->query("INSERT INTO 'Years' ('year') (".$i.")");
}