Get fields out of an entity returned by EntityFieldQuery

Question

I have a video content type. I run the following query in hook_cron:

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

This returns number of entity object with property nid, vid and type. I want to use this object to find a value of a particular field of the video (say duration). I don't want to use node_load, because I would have done that in the first place instead of using the query. How can this be done?

Answer 1

The EntityFieldQuery Extra Fields module could solve your problem.

The query, as show below, will return an object that contains the entity id, entity type, and an object that contains entity_type, entity_id, revision_id, bundle, and the requested field. Your code would be:

$query = new EntityFieldQueryExtraFields();

$query->entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
  ->entityCondition('bundle', 'video')
  ->addExtraField('field_duration', 'value', 'value')
  ->propertyCondition('status', 1);

$results = $query->execute();

I am currently using this solution on a site.

Answer 2

It can't - an EntityFieldQuery will only ever load the entity ID, and the bundle keys.

There's no choice but to use node_load_multiple() (or the equivalent if using a different entity type).

$nodes = node_load_multiple(array_keys($results['node']));

Bear in mind that the $conditions parameter of node_load_multiple() is deprecated; in favour of EntityFieldQuery as I understand it.

You could theoretically subclass EntityFieldQuery and override the execute() method to return the fully loaded entities - but you'll also need to extend the class so it always knows what entity type it's querying for; otherwise it won't know which key to use in $results.