How to return a default value when no rows are returned from the select statement

Question

I have a select statement that returns two columns, a date column, and a count(value) column. When the count(value) column doesn\'t have any records,

Answer 1

Try this:

DECLARE @Records TABLE (
    [RecordDate] DATETIME,
    [RecordCount] INT
)

DECLARE @Date DATETIME = '02/26/2014' -- Enter whatever date you want to start with
DECLARE @EndDate DATETIME = '03/31/2014' -- Enter whatever date you want to stop
WHILE (1=1)
BEGIN
    -- Insert the date into the temp table along with the count
    INSERT INTO @Records (RecordDate, RecordCount) 
    VALUES (CONVERT(VARCHAR(25), @Date, 101), 
            (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.YourTable WHERE RecordDate = @Date))

    -- Go to the next day
    @Date = DATEADD(d, 1, @Date)

    -- If we have surpassed the end date, break out of the loop
    IF (@Date > @EndDate) BREAK;
END

SELECT * FROM @Records

If your dates have time components, you would need to modify this to check for start and end of day in the SELECT COUNT(*)... query.