How to group by time bucket in ClickHouse and fill missing data with nulls/0s

You can generate zero values using the "number" function. Then join your query and zero values using UNION ALL and already according to the obtained data we make a GROUP BY.

So, your query will look like:

SELECT SUM(metric),
       time
  FROM (
        SELECT toStartOfQuarter(toDate(1514761200+number*30*24*3600))  time,
               toUInt16(0) AS metric
          FROM numbers(30)

     UNION ALL 

          SELECT toStartOfQuarter(created_at) AS time,
               metric
          FROM mytable
         WHERE created_at >= toDate(1514761200)
           AND created_at >= toDateTime(1514761200)
           AND created_at <= toDate(1546210800)
           AND created_at <= toDateTime(1546210800)
       )
 GROUP BY time
 ORDER BY time

note toUInt16(0) - zero values must be of the same type as metrics

From ClickHouse 19.14 you can use the WITH FILL clause. It can fill quarters in this way:

WITH
    (
        SELECT toRelativeQuarterNum(toDate('1970-01-01'))
    ) AS init
SELECT
    -- build the date from the relative quarter number
    toDate('1970-01-01') + toIntervalQuarter(q - init) AS time,
    metric
FROM
(
    SELECT
        toRelativeQuarterNum(created_at) AS q,
        sum(rand()) AS metric
    FROM
    (
        -- generate some dates and metrics values with gaps
        SELECT toDate(arrayJoin(range(1514761200, 1546210800, ((60 * 60) * 24) * 180))) AS created_at
    )
    GROUP BY q
    ORDER BY q ASC WITH FILL FROM toRelativeQuarterNum(toDate(1514761200)) TO toRelativeQuarterNum(toDate(1546210800)) STEP 1
)

┌───────time─┬─────metric─┐
│ 2018-01-01 │ 2950782089 │
│ 2018-04-01 │ 2972073797 │
│ 2018-07-01 │          0 │
│ 2018-10-01 │  179581958 │
└────────────┴────────────┘