writing a row for each day. mySQL - php

Question

i've a web form, the user input two dates (YYYY/MM/DD) representing a interval and other informations about an activity on a day.
EXAMPLE: he select 2013/09/12 to 2013/10/02 activity: Swimming
in that case my table will look like:
date | activity
2013/09/12 | swimming
2013/09/13 | swimming
2013/09/14 | swimming
2013/09/15 | swimming
2013/09/16 | swimming
and so on....
i've to write a row with the activity for every day of the date inveral provided by the user
can i do this without iterate through days manually?
i'm using php+mysqli
EDIT: i can't use two columns for start and end date

Answer 1

I think it is better to make two columns (e.g start_day & end_day).
If it is not possible to change your DB construction you can try this:
PHP:
$last_date = $start_date;
$ready = false;
while ($ready === false) {
$last_date = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($last_date . ' + 1 day'));+
// add $last_date to your mysql table here
if ($last_date == $stop_date) {
$ready = true;
}
}
It's untested but I hope it works ;)

Answer 2

Use 2 different date columns in your table; one for the start date and one for the end date, you can then add the beginning and end dates of the activity to each of these respectively.

Answer 3

i can give You a clue if You can use PROCEDURES:
DELIMITER $$
DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `dowhile_thing`$$
CREATE DEFINER=`root`#`localhost` PROCEDURE `dowhile_thing`(dt_start DATE,dt_stop DATE, thing CHAR(20))
BEGIN
DECLARE v1 INT DEFAULT 0;
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE tmp (
`day_name` VARCHAR(256) DEFAULT NULL,
`date_change` DATE DEFAULT NULL,
thing CHAR(20)
) ENGINE=MYISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 ;
SELECT TIMESTAMPDIFF(DAY, dt_start, dt_stop)+1 INTO v1;
WHILE v1 > -1 DO
INSERT tmp (SELECT DAYNAME( ADDDATE(dt_start, INTERVAL v1 DAY) ),ADDDATE(dt_start, INTERVAL v1 DAY),thing );
SET v1 = v1 - 1;
END WHILE;
SELECT * FROM tmp;
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS tmp;
END$$
DELIMITER ;
and then call:
CALL dowhile_thing('2013-06-10','2013-06-14','swim');
result:
day_name | date_change | thing
Saturday | 2013-06-15 | swim
Friday | 2013-06-14 | swim
...