SQL first of every month - sql

Question

Supposing that I wanted to write table valued function in SQL that returns a table with the first day of every month between the argument dates, what is the simplest way to do this?
For example fnFirstOfMonths('10/31/10', '2/17/11') would return a one-column table with 11/1/10, 12/1/10, 1/1/11, and 2/1/11 as the elements.
My first instinct is just to use a while loop and repeatedly insert first days of months until I get to before the start date. It seems like there should be a more elegant way to do this though.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

Answer 1

Something like this would work without being inside a function:
DECLARE #LowerDate DATE
SET #LowerDate = GETDATE()
DECLARE #UpperLimit DATE
SET #UpperLimit = '20111231'
;WITH Firsts AS
(
SELECT
DATEADD(DAY, -1 * DAY(#LowerDate) + 1, #LowerDate) AS 'FirstOfMonth'
UNION ALL
SELECT
DATEADD(MONTH, 1, f.FirstOfMonth) AS 'FirstOfMonth'
FROM
Firsts f
WHERE
DATEADD(MONTH, 1, f.FirstOfMonth) <= #UpperLimit
)
SELECT *
FROM Firsts
It uses a thing called CTE (Common Table Expression) - available in SQL Server 2005 and up and other database systems.
In this case, I start the recursive CTE by determining the first of the month for the #LowerDate date specified, and then I iterate adding one month to the previous first of month, until the upper limit is reached.
Or if you want to package it up in a stored function, you can do so, too:
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.GetFirstOfMonth(#LowerLimit DATE, #UpperLimit DATE)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
WITH Firsts AS
(
SELECT
DATEADD(DAY, -1 * DAY(#LowerLimit) + 1, #LowerLimit) AS 'FirstOfMonth'
UNION ALL
SELECT
DATEADD(MONTH, 1, f.FirstOfMonth) AS 'FirstOfMonth'
FROM
Firsts f
WHERE
DATEADD(MONTH, 1, f.FirstOfMonth) <= #UpperLimit
)
SELECT * FROM Firsts
and then call it like this:
SELECT * FROM dbo.GetFirstOfMonth('20100522', '20100831')
to get an output like this:
FirstOfMonth
2010-05-01
2010-06-01
2010-07-01
2010-08-01
PS: by using the DATE datatype - which is present in SQL Server 2008 and newer - I fixed the two "bugs" that Richard commented about. If you're on SQL Server 2005, you'll have to use DATETIME instead - and deal with the fact you're getting a time portion, too.

Answer 2

create function dbo.fnFirstOfMonths(#d1 datetime, #d2 datetime)
returns table as return
select dateadd(m,datediff(m,0,#d1)+v.number,0) as FirstDay
from master..spt_values v
where v.type='P' and v.number between 0 and datediff(m, #d1, #d2)
and dateadd(m,datediff(m,0,#d1)+v.number,0) between #d1 and #d2
GO
Notes
master..spt_values is a source for general purpose sequence numbers in SQL Server
dateadd(m, datediff(m is a technique for working out the first day of month for any date
+v.number is used to increase it by one month each time
0 and datediff(m, #d1, #d2) this condition gives us all the numbers we need to generate a first-of-month date for each month between #d1 and #d2, inclusive of both months
and dateadd(m,datediff(m,0,#d1)+v.number,0) between #d1 and #d2 the final filter to verify that the first-of-month date generated is between #d1 and #d2
Performance comparison against marc_s's code
Summary
8220 ms (CTE)
4173 ms (master..spt_values)
Test
declare #t table (dt datetime)
declare #d datetime
declare #i int
set nocount on
set #d = GETDATE()
set #i = 0
while #i < 10000
begin
insert #t select * from dbo.getfirstofmonth('20090102', '20100506')
delete #t
set #i = #i + 1
end
print datediff(ms, #d, getdate())
set #d = GETDATE()
set #i = 0
while #i < 10000
begin
insert #t select * from dbo.fnfirstofmonths('20090102', '20100506')
delete #t
set #i = #i + 1
end
print datediff(ms, #d, getdate())
Performante

Answer 3

It will loop just between the months involved (4 times in the example):
set dateformat mdy;
declare #date1 smalldatetime,#date2 smalldatetime,#i int
set #date1= '10-31-2010'
set #date2= '02-17-2011'
set #i=1
while(#i<=DATEDIFF(mm,#date1,#date2))
begin
select convert(smalldatetime,CONVERT(varchar(6),DATEADD(mm,#i,#date1),112)+'01',112)
set #i=#i+1
end

Answer 4

I realize this isn't a function, but I'm going to throw this into the mix anyway.
select cal_date from calendar
where day_of_month = 1
and cal_date between '2011-01-01' and '2012-01-01'
This calendar table runs on a PostgreSQL server at work. I'll port it to SQL Server tonight, and run some speed comparisons. (Why? Because this stuff is fun, that's why.)

Answer 5

Just in case anybody is still reading this ...
I cannot imaging that any of the aforementioned functions is faster than this:
declare #DatFirst date = '20101031', #DatLast date = '21110217';
declare #DatFirstOfFirstMonth date = dateadd(day,1-day(#DatFirst),#DatFirst);
select DatFirstOfMonth = dateadd(month,n,#DatFirstOfFirstMonth)
from (
select top (datediff(month,#DatFirstOfFirstMonth,#DatLast)+1)
n=row_number() over (order by (select 1))-1
from (values (1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1)) a (n)
cross join (values (1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1)) b (n)
cross join (values (1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1)) c (n)
cross join (values (1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1),(1)) d (n)
) x