Recommended way to do IS DISTINCT FROM, not_eq_or_null or not_cont_or_null

[jaykilleen]

I am going down the rabbit hole of understanding why a simple query like name not_cont '%abc%' was not returning results where name was NULL.

At first I thought I wasn't using ransack correctly but after runnning .to_sql and using those results in pgadmin I realised it was postgres and then further realising the sql standard treats nulls as unknown values and hence you can't knowingly use them in a != or NOT ILIKE query.

So, what is the recommended way then, for us to do not_eq_or_null in Ransack??

I am going down the path patching areal and using ransack custom predicates.
Sounds like using IS DISTINCT FROM would also be good but doesn't appear to be supported in Arel due to incompatibilities with other databases (ie not Postgresql).

Does this sound like the way? If anyone has any advice that would be appreciated. I'll try and write up my method here when I get something that works well.

https://groups.google.com/g/rubyonrails-core/c/VSR1I1iwxJo?pli=1
https://medium.com/@justinboylantoomey/postgres-not-equal-only-returns-non-null-values-5f0a42fa75dc
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Is_distinct_from