Printing bibliographic entries between two dates

Question

How do I create a bibcheck that would only print publications between two dates, let's say between May 1st, 2017 and April 30th, 2018? Using biblatex 3.9, biber 2.10 on Mac OS X 10.13.4, compiling with XeLatex in TexShop.

The Biblatex manual provides \defbibcheck. In the example below, \defbibcheck is used to print publications since the year 2000. But I don't know how to modify it to print only publications between two dates.

\defbibcheck{recent}{%
\iffieldint{year}
{\ifnumless{\thefield{year}}{2000}
{\skipentry}
{}}
{\skipentry}}

MWE Below

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
    @article{greenwade93,
        author  = "A Guy",
        title   = "A document",
        date    = "2016-01-05",
        journal = "Journal of Post-Modern Mysticisms",
        volume  = "14",
        number  = "3",
        pages   = "342--351"
    }

    @book{abook,
        author    = "An Other Auther",
        title     = "Something Really Important",
        date      = "2017-06-01",
        publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
        address   = "Somewhere Town"
    }
    \end{filecontents}



\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
Test
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Answer 1

A straightforward way is to add a test if your entry was written (on or) after a specific date. That can then be used as in biblatex, biber, is it possible to \printbibliography between two years?. The test is very naive at the moment and will throw an error if an entry without month or day information is encountered - of course one could guard against that, but it is not sure whether something written in year = {2018} is from after 2018-05-08 or not.

\ifdateafter{yyyy}{mm}{dd} checks if an entry's date is after yyyy-mm-dd (">"), \ifdateonorafter{yyyy}{mm}{dd} checks if the date is not before yyyy-mm-dd (">="). The commands have an optional argument that can be used to check different dates, use \ifdateonorafter[url] to check the URL date of an entry or \ifdateonorafter[orig] to check the origdate field; the default is an empty optional argument, which checks date.

You can now use \ifdateonorafter in \defbibcheck to only select entries written on or after 2017-05-01 but before 2018-05-01.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}

% this macro is not used in the check below, but might still be useful
% check if entry's date > {yyyy}{mm}{dd} 
\newcommand*{\ifdateafter}[4][]{%
  \ifboolexpr{test {\ifnumgreater{\thefield{#1year}}{#2}}
              or (test {\ifnumequal{\thefield{#1year}}{#2}}
                  and (test {\ifnumgreater{\thefield{#1month}}{#3}}
                       or (test {\ifnumequal{\thefield{#1month}}{#3}}
                           and test {\ifnumgreater{\thefield{#1day}}{#4}})))}}

% check if entry's date >= {yyyy}{mm}{dd} 
\newcommand*{\ifdateonorafter}[4][]{%
  \ifboolexpr{test {\ifnumgreater{\thefield{#1year}}{#2}}
              or (test {\ifnumequal{\thefield{#1year}}{#2}}
                  and (test {\ifnumgreater{\thefield{#1month}}{#3}}
                       or (test {\ifnumequal{\thefield{#1month}}{#3}}
                           and not test {\ifnumless{\thefield{#1day}}{#4}})))}}

\defbibcheck{thisyear}{%
  \iffieldint{year}
    {\ifdateonorafter{2017}{5}{1}      % date >= 2017-05-01?
       {\ifdateonorafter{2018}{5}{1}   % date >= 2018-05-01
          {\skipentry}                 % too new for us (date >= 2018-05-01)
          {}}                          % just right (2017-05-01 <= date < 2018-05-01)
       {\skipentry}}                   % too old (date <2017-05-01)
    {\skipentry}}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{greenwade93,
  author  = "A Guy",
  title   = "A document",
  date    = "2018-05-01",
  journal = "Journal of Post-Modern Mysticisms",
  volume  = "14",
  number  = "3",
  pages   = "342--351"
}

@book{abook,
  author    = "An Other Auther",
  title     = "Something Really Important",
  date      = "2017-06-01",
  publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
  address   = "Somewhere Town"
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
Test
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography[check=thisyear]
\end{document}

Answer 2

An alternative method would be to use a regex on the date in a sourcemap to add a keyword to the entries of interest (That's an adaptation to your requirements of jon's answer in the link provided by moewe in the comments, that is: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/346299/105447).

For your case, as your interval stretches from the first day of a month to the last day of another, we only need to control for the months. But the technique is extensible for the case in which the day is actually needed or to the case in which the date might not always be specified in full.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
  @article{greenwade93,
    author  = "A Guy",
    title   = "A document",
    date    = "2016-01-05",
    journal = "Journal of Post-Modern Mysticisms",
    volume  = "14",
    number  = "3",
    pages   = "342--351"
  }

  @book{abook,
    author    = "An Other Auther",
    title     = "Something Really Important",
    date      = "2017-06-01",
    publisher = "Addison-Wesley",
    address   = "Somewhere Town"
  }
\end{filecontents}

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex]{
    \map[overwrite]{
      \step[fieldsource=date,  match=\regexp{^(2017-(0[5-9]|1[1-2])|2018-0[1-4])}, final]
      \step[fieldset=keywords, fieldvalue={,daterange}, append]
      \step[fieldsource=keywords, match=\regexp{\A,}, replace={}]
    }
  }
}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography[keyword=daterange]
\end{document}