List of days with events that occur on that day - mysql

Question

I have a table of events, each of which has a start date and an end date.
I need to display a list of days and show which events are occurring on each day.
E.g. Say I have on event that runs mon-wed and another that runs tues-thurs I'm trying to create a table like so:
Mon: Event 1
Tue: Event 1, Event 2
Wed: Event 1, Event 2
Thu: Event 2
The only way I can see to do this is either by running a query for each day or by loading all events for given date range and then duplicating them in my code if they last for more than one day. Both approaches seem hacky and I'm sure I'm missing something.
Is there a neater way to do this?
Structure:
id INT
name VARCHAR
start_date DATE
end_date DATE
Current query (slightly simplified because this database structure is appalling):
SELECT *
FROM events
WHERE start_date <= $somedate
AND end_date >= $somedate
...where $somedate is a given date. (Yes, I am escaping it properly in my code!)

Answer 1

Select your events for a particular date range (I assume a particular month). Then loop over the days in that month and have another, inner loop that displays any events that occur on that date.
<?php
$events = getEvents(); // some function that returns events from database
echo '<ol class="calendar">';
for ($i = 1; $i <= cal_days_in_month(); $i++) {
echo '<li>';
$beginning = mktime(0, 0, 0, date('n'), $i, date('Y'));
$end = mktime(23, 59, 59, date('n'), $i, date('Y'));
$events_on_day = array();
foreach ($events as $event) {
if ($event->start_date <= $end && $event->end_date >= $beginning) {
$events_on_day[] = $event;
}
}
if ($events_on_day > 0) {
echo '<ul>';
foreach ($events_on_day as $event_on_day) {
echo '<li>' . $event_on_day->name . '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
}
}
echo '</ol>';
?>

Answer 2

There's probably a better way, but off the top of my head I would say to create a table of possible dates, then simply
select * from events
inner join possibleDates on possibleDates.Date >= start_date and possibleDates.Date <= end_date

Answer 3

First you'll propably have to get all dates between start_date and end_date of each event.
Put the in a temp. table like:
|Weekday| Event_name|
|Mo | Event1 |
|Tu | Event1 |
|We | Event1 |
|We | Event2 |
|Th | Event2 |
|Fr | Event2 |
and then group_concat the events by group by on weekday.
This link will help you to get the dates between start and end date of each event.:
Get a list of dates between two dates

Answer 4

You can do it in one query if you must, though I would advise getting a weekday-table like Jan Zeiseweis also suggests. Working SQLfiddle: http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!2/e618d9/1/0
SELECT wk.day, GROUP_CONCAT(e.name, '') events
FROM (
SELECT 'Monday' day, 0 dayIndex
UNION
SELECT 'Tuesday' day, 1 dayIndex
UNION
SELECT 'Wednesday' day, 2 dayIndex
UNION
SELECT 'Thursday' day, 3 dayIndex
UNION
SELECT 'Friday' day, 4 dayIndex
UNION
SELECT 'Saturday' day, 5 dayIndex
UNION
SELECT 'Sunday' day, 6 dayIndex
) wk
LEFT JOIN Events e
ON WEEKDAY(e.start) <= wk.dayIndex
AND WEEKDAY(e.end) >= wk.dayIndex
GROUP BY wk.day ORDER BY wk.dayIndex