Get raw/unformatted field values?

Question

Is there a way to get raw/unformatted values for a field before they're passed to the field's normalizeValue function? That is, get the value close to how it's stored in the database? I haven't found a documented method for this in the documentation.

Background

I'm building a section with a categories field, the selected categories act as filters for an entries feed that is displayed on the frontend for that entry. So I'm doing something like this:

{% set selectedCategories = entry.my_categories_field.ids() %}
{% set entriesFeed = craft.entries().relatedTo(selectedCategories).all() %}

But the additional database query is kind of pointless. As far as I know, the categories field already stores the selected categories as a list of IDs – correct me if I'm wrong. So when the field is accessed, it returns a CategoryQuery populated with a filter to match those IDs. Then I execute that query with .ids() just to get the IDs from the database that are already stored in the field in the first place.

Is there a simple way to get the stored IDs for that field directly without an additional database query? I.e., the value before its normalized to a CategoryQuery by normalizeValue?

Answer 1

I might be misunderstanding but if your my_categories_field is a Categories field then dump {{ dump(entry.my_categories_field) }} and you'll see that the ids aren't there.

Relations are stored in the relations table and are fetched using sourceId and fieldId.

From what I can see, you are on an entry page so what you could do if you wanted to lighten things up a little is to eager-load your categories:

{% do craft.app.elements.eagerLoadElements(
    className(entry),
    [entry],
    ['my_categories_field']
) %}

Then fetch your entries with:

{% set entriesFeed = craft.entries()
    .relatedTo(entry.my_categories_field)
    .all() %}

I'm not sure that's the answer but hopefully it helps :)