Problems with date ranges and missing records

[James Delaney]

Hi, this is the first time i've posted here. Please treat me gently as I am a relative newcomer to MySQL/PHP.

I have been set a task of finding and totalling the number of items arriving on a a given day, the problem I have is this:

On a day when no items arrive no records are created, and this creates a gap in the results. I need the date to be included and to reflect a value of 0 for that missing day.

At the moment the code I am using is this:

SELECT
DATE_FORMAT(items.DateArrived, '%d/%m') AS Arrived,
COUNT(items.DateArrived) AS TotalArrived
FROM
`returns`
WHERE
(items.DateArrived <= '2005-07-25') AND
(items.DateArrived >= '2005-07-05')

I'm not sure if this can be done in MySQL or whether or not PHP would need to be used. Anyone got any pointers?

James