Magento, filter collection by date period and include null values

Question

I'm having a difficult time settling up a dates filter on a collection with custom tables. Have searched here and here and some other places but still can not get what I need. The problem is that I can't add the NULL values to the result set.

So far my current code after several trial and error tests:

$myBannersCollection = Mage::getModel('banners/bannersadmin')->getCollection()
                   ->addfieldtofilter('banner_prod_id',$currentProdID)
                   ->addfieldtofilter('banner_start_date', 
                       array(
                         array('from' => Mage::getModel('core/date')->gmtDate()),
                                 'banner_start_date' => null))
                   ->addfieldtofilter('banner_end_date',
                       array(
                         array('gteq' => Mage::getModel('core/date')->gmtDate()),
                                 'null' => true)
                                  );
var_dump((string) $myBannersCollection->getselect());

This code ouputs the following sql snippet:

SELECT `main_table`.* 
  FROM `dts_banners_admin` AS `main_table` 
 WHERE (banner_prod_id = '16')
  AND (((banner_start_date >= '2012-11-28 14:39:13') OR (banner_start_date='')))
   AND (banner_end_date IS NULL)

Have tried several different options to add the NULL condition but no way I can get something like:

SELECT `main_table`.* 
  FROM `dts_banners_admin` AS `main_table` 
 WHERE (banner_prod_id = '16')
  AND (((banner_start_date>='2012-11-28 14:39:13') OR (banner_start_date IS NULL)))
   AND ((banner_end_date >= '2012-11-28 14:39:13') OR (banner_end_date IS NULL))

PS: does Magento has a BETWEEN operator on the addfieldtofilter?

Answer 1

Got it! Thanks to this SO answer. Needed to add another array just for the IS NULL clause. Now the code is:

$myBannersCollection = Mage::getModel('banners/bannersadmin')->getCollection()
                   ->addfieldtofilter('banner_prod_id',$currentProdID)
                   ->addfieldtofilter('banner_start_date', 
                        array(
                         array('to' => Mage::getModel('core/date')->gmtDate()),
                                 array('banner_start_date', 'null'=>'')))
                   ->addfieldtofilter('banner_end_date',
                        array(
                         array('gteq' => Mage::getModel('core/date')->gmtDate()),
                             array('banner_end_date', 'null'=>''))
                                  );

And outputs this:

SELECT `main_table`.*
  FROM `dts_banners_admin` AS `main_table`
 WHERE (banner_prod_id = '16')
 AND (((banner_start_date>='2012-11-28 15:12:03') OR (banner_start_date IS NULL)))
   AND (((banner_end_date >= '2012-11-28 15:12:03') OR (banner_end_date IS NULL)))

EDIT

Modified the banner_start_date as I was using from instead of to and so the period was incorrectly settled up and no data was returned.