Search Customer Profiles by null custom attribute value

Question

I have created a new custom attribute in Profile Object. It is a boolean attribute. Now I need to retrieve all customers without that attribute (null) or with that attribute value being false.

I have tried a lot of ways but it always shows me 0 results. The only way I have found to retrieve the desired profiles is by setting the attribute manually to true and then to false.

I have also tried changing the custom attribute type to String or Set of Strings but the default value does not apply to existing profiles.

Does anyone know if can I retrieve the profiles without that attribute being initialized?

Thank you all.

Answer 1

The problem you were probably facing is related to how Boolean values work. A Boolean can have the value "null" which is why a query in the form of

custom.myValue = false

will not work for records where the value was not explicitly set to false. A way around this is to turn the if statement around.

custom.myValue != true

This is also true for other types besides Booleans and is not reflected well in the documentation.