Are there any MySQL functions to get all rows with with a start or end date that fall between a given start and end date?

Question

I have a table of events with a recorded start and end time as a MySQL DATETIME object (in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. I want to find all events that occur

Answer 1

This will find every event that is completely contained inside the range:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE start_date BETWEEN start_of_range AND end_of_range 
                      AND stop_date  BETWEEN start_of_range AND end_of_range

This will find any events where any part of the event overlaps any part of the range:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE start_date <= end_of_range 
                      AND stop_date  >= start_of_range