Ransack gem, using 'in' predicate for range on a single attribute - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm currently switching over the Ransack gem. I'm having an issue using the "in" predicate on an integer attribute. My form select looks like this:
<%= form.select :roles_mask_in, options_for_select([['Not Admin', 0..254], ['Admin', 255..255]]), include_blank: "All" %>
An admin has a roles_mask attribute that contains an integer. A 255 indicates that a user is an admin, so I want the Admin selection to only be 255. This part works just fine.
However, when choosing the "Not Admin" choice, it's only returning one result, when it should be returning many (there are many non-admins in this group and their roles_mask integers vary wildly. I decided to use the in predicate to look for numbers within that range. Instead, it is only returning one result, instead of multiple.
Controller (much like all my other controllers that have been changed and have no issue, which leads me to believe this is a predicate, or range issue):
#q = current_company.managers.ransack(params[:q])
#search = #q.result(distinct: true).includes(:user)
A user is included for the association.
I ran this in Ruby console, just to make sure it was returning the correct sql. Manager.ransack(roles_mask_in: 0..244).result.to_sql, which returns the correct SQL (I think):
"SELECT managers``.* FROM managers`` WHERE ``managers.roles_mask`` IN (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244)"
So the question is: why is it only returning one result, and not all of the managers that should be in that result?

Answer 1

The query is returning only one result because the code above does pass a String instead of a Range Object to ransack due to POST via REST (HTML form).
SIDENOTE: When posting form data from HTML to rails, rails usually takes care of the type-conversion based on types defined in the Model (via the ORM layer).
In the case above you'll have to handle conversion by yourself. (To see this, look what params contains before calling ransack in your controller.)
Type is being cast to String by HTML then passed to ransack which does not know how to handle a String as a Range. To make this work you'll have to convert the string into a range before running the search query like so:
params[:q][:id_in] = string_to_range(params[:q][:roles_mask_in])
with
def string_to_range(rangestr)
rangestr.split('..').inject { |s,e| s.to_i..e.to_i }
end
For more info on the conversion see this SO answer: Best way to convert a Ruby string range to a Range object