Get article list based on custom field value (com_fields)

Question

I'm trying to get all the articles from a specific category with a specific value in one of the custom fields (com_fields) I have created.

I have this code:

$model = JModelLegacy::getInstance('Articles', 'ContentModel', array('ignore_request' => true));
$model->setState('params', JFactory::getApplication()->getParams());
$model->setState('filter.category_id', 22);

$articles = $model->getItems();

This brings up 2 different problems.

1. It gets all the articles from a specific category. But without the com_fields values
2. This gets all the articles, and in adding the com_fields values I can filter these articles but the problem is that it put unnecessary load on the webserver. Is there some sort of better solution to only get the articles with the custom field value?

Answer 1

Looking at the source code for com_content - ArticlesModel does not have any filtering capabilities for custom fields. What it does have is tag filtering, so would it be possible to modify your code so that instead of writing a value to a custom field you instead assign a custom tag to the article which you can then use filter.tag when getting your ContentModel?