I am implementing a fairly simple calendar on a website using PHP and MySQL. I want to be able to handle dates that repeat indefinitely and am not sure of the best way to do it.

For a time limited repeating event it seems to make sense to just add each event within the timeframe into my db table and group them with some form of recursion id.

But when there is no limit to how often the event repeats, is it better to

a) put records in the db for a specific time frame (eg the next 2 years) and then periodically check and add new records as time goes by - The problem with this is that if someone is looking 3 years ahead, the event won't show up

b) not actually have records for each event but instead when i check in my php code for events within a specified time period, calculate wether a repeated event will occur within this time period - The problem with this is that it means there isn't a specific record for each event which i can see being a pain when i then want to associate other info (attendance etc) with that event. It also seems like it might be a bit slow

Has anyone tried either of these methods? If so how did it work out? Or is there some other ingenious crafty method i'm missing?