Construct entries object from an array of IDs

Question

I have 2 arrays of entry ID's that I need to merge and generate an entries object that I can iterate through and paginate. The reason for doing it this way at all, is that I need to display entries with a specific category, and those without any category as per the code below.

Perhaps I'm approaching this all wrong and there's a different way to get the entries.

{% set vetCategoryID        = 437950 %}
    {% set noPersonnelType  = craft.entries.section('veterinarians').personnelType(':empty:').limit(null).ids() %}
    {% set vets             = craft.entries.section('veterinarians').personnelType(vetCategoryID).limit(null).ids() %}
    {% set merged           = noPersonnelType|merge(vets) %}
    
    {# this displays all, but makes pagination impossible, so no dice. #}
    {% for item in merged %}
        {% set entry = craft.entries({id: item}) %}
        {{ dd(entry) }}
    {% endfor %}

I tried using {% set entries = craft.entries(merged) %} but that doesn't work at all.

Searching here gives me this question: Converting array of entries to an array of ids, but it's the opposite problem.

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, you could do this in one query:

{% set vetCategoryID = 437950 %}

{# Get all entries where personnelType is empty OR equals vetCategoryID #}
{% set query  = craft.entries()
    .section('veterinarians')
    .personnelType([':empty:', vetCategoryID])
    .limit(10) %}

{# Paginate #}
{% paginate query as pageInfo, pageEntries %}

{% for entry in pageEntries %}
{{ entry.title }} <br>
{% endfor %}

{% if pageInfo.prevUrl %}<a href="{{ pageInfo.prevUrl }}">Previous Page</a>{% endif %}
{% if pageInfo.nextUrl %}<a href="{{ pageInfo.nextUrl }}">Next Page</a>{% endif %}

See documentation on querying Categories fields and pagination.

Answer 2

The answer to this was simpler than I thought. So simple, that I thought I had tried it already.

{% set entries          = craft.entries.id(merged) %}

    {% for entry in entries %}
        {{ entry.id }}: {{ entry.title }}
    {% endfor %}