First, the setup. I needed two text boxes to hold the start/end dates and then wanted the user to click links to auto-populate them with some relative dates:

<a href="javascript: void(0);" onclick="return setRelativeDate('today')">Today</a>

<label for="txtStartDate">Start Date:</label><input id="txtStartDate" type="text" />
<label for="txtEndDate">End Date:</label><input id="txtEndDate" type="text" />

Then to figure out how to calculate the dates using JavaScript. Here are the examples.. starting out easy with Today‘s date. When creating a new Date object, it is automatically initialized to the current day and time:

var today = new Date();
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(today);
txtEndDate.value = txtStartDate.value;

Yesterday is Today -1:

var yesterday = new Date();
yesterday.setDate(yesterday.getDate()-1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(yesterday);
txtEndDate.value = txtStartDate.value;

This Week is a little more complicated. getDate() returns the day of the month (1-31) and getDay() returns the day of the week (0-6).

var thisWeek = new Date();
// set the date to most recent Sunday
thisWeek.setDate(thisWeek.getDate() - thisWeek.getDay());
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(thisWeek);
// set the date to last week's Saturday
thisWeek.setDate(thisWeek.getDate() + 6);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(thisWeek);

Last Week is pretty similar to this week. I think the hardest part for me is the function names getDate and getDay. I always was getting them confused and thought that they should have been more specific… like getWeekDay and getMonthDay or something.

var lastWeek = new Date();
// set the date to last week's Sunday
lastWeek.setDate(lastWeek.getDate() - lastWeek.getDay() - 7);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastWeek);
// set the date to last week's Saturday
lastWeek.setDate(lastWeek.getDate() + 6);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastWeek);

The main difficulty I had with This Month was how to figure out the last day of the month. Luckily, if you can figure it out by selecting the first of next month and then subtracting a day.

var lastDayOfThisMonth = new Date();
// go to the next month
var nextMonth = lastDayOfThisMonth.getMonth() + 1;
lastDayOfThisMonth.setMonth(nextMonth);
// go to the last day of the previous month (this month)
lastDayOfThisMonth.setDate(0);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisMonth);
lastDayOfThisMonth.setDate(1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisMonth);

Notice how Last Month is actually easier because you can simply move backwards a month.

var lastDayOfLastMonth = new Date(); // now
lastDayOfLastMonth.setDate(0); // last day of last month            
// set the end date first
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastMonth);
lastDayOfLastMonth.setDate(1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastMonth);

The only issue I had with This Year was I didn’t realize that  setMonth(int) took a zero based month: 0 = January … 11 = December.

var lastDayOfThisYear = new Date();
lastDayOfThisYear.setMonth(11); // December
lastDayOfThisYear.setDate(31);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisYear);
lastDayOfThisYear.setMonth(0); // January
lastDayOfThisYear.setDate(1);
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfThisYear);

Finally, to figure out Last Year I took advantage of the setFullYear(year,month,day) function to subtract one year.

var lastDayOfLastYear = new Date();
// -1 means last year
// 11 means December and there always is a 31st of december
var thisYear = lastDayOfLastYear.getFullYear();
lastDayOfLastYear.setFullYear(thisYear - 1, 11, 31);
txtEndDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastYear);
lastDayOfLastYear.setMonth(0); // January
lastDayOfLastYear.setDate(1); // 1st
txtStartDate.value = getShortDateString(lastDayOfLastYear);

See all of it together in the complete demo.

References:

• JavaScript Date Object
• JavaScript Date Object Full Reference

What this assumes:

• You know how to get to Central Admin and the Search Admin screens
• Any URLs below you will have to replace “centraladmin” with your own server ip
• The place where you can run incremental or full crawls is:

  http://centraladmin/ssp/admin/_layouts/listcontentsources.aspx

Metadata properties:

• In order to have more columns to search, you must add them to the “Metadata” in the ssp

  http://centraladmin/ssp/admin/_layouts/schema.aspx

• Any metadata property has a 64 character limit when querying using Enterprise Search SQL (ESSQL)
• In order for a column to show up in the Add Mapping dialog an INCREMENTAL crawl is required (column existed and just didn’t have data in… added some data to the list making sure to populate the new fields and then ran an incremental)
• Adding a Managed Property requires a FULL crawl in order to populate the data in that field

Search visibility:

• If a site has Search Visibility disabled, it will show up as a warning in the crawl log. LISTS DO NOT
• Changing a list’s Search Visibility (in advanced settings) will require a INCREMENTAL (full is not required) crawl in order to start showing up in search results

Search scopes:

• Changing an existing search scope requires you to update the scope again
  Go back to Central Admin -> ssp -> Search Settings -> Start Updating
  After clicking Update… it almost always goes from 0% to 100% after a while… no in between
• Changing scopes does not require an incremental or full crawl (you simply need to update the scope again) see above
• For a search scope, to have it include list items your scope should have a “folder” with a value like (encoded url with trailing slash):

  http://moss/sitecollection/subsite/Lists/My%20List%20Name/

Also, here is some very unhelpful microsoft documentation:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms493660.aspx

Leave a comment if you have questions!