How to get a field value of multiple nodes?

Question

I have some node ids from entityfieldquery. I would like to get the values of a field from all of these nodes. Should I use db_query, or should do a node_load_multiple, and get the field value with a foreach? db_query seems more efficient.

Answer 1

You can use field_attach_load() which will load the fields for a group of entities. You can also pass in the field_id value so it doesn't load unnecessary fields. I benchmarked field_attach_load() against entity_load() (which is what node_load_multiple will call) and the former was approximately ten times faster.

Here is an example:

$query = new EntityFieldQuery();
$query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
  ->entityCondition('bundle', 'post')
  ->propertyCondition('status', 1);
$result = $query->execute();

if (isset($result['node'])) {
  // field_attach_load() requires entities to be passed on it with the bundle 
  // and the ID instead of just IDs. We need to add these values to the result
  // of EntityFieldQuery()
  foreach ($result['node'] as &$node) {
    $node->bundle = $node->type;
    $node->id = $node->nid;
  }
  field_attach_load('node', $result['node'], FIELD_LOAD_CURRENT, array('field_id' => 'body'));
}

Answer 2

ya u r right. node_load_multiple fires huge pressure on db and it can effect on ur site's performance. So, always use db_select or db_query for ur use, if there is no option available then only use loads....