When query a post, I need not only the post but also the post_meta. But seems the post query and meta query can not be done together.
With WP_Query, I first get the posts, then, I need to do get_post_meta(get_the_ID(),'key',true)
Is this the way WP works? Or, is there a way to query both in one hit?
When you do a query WordPress already gets the post_meta.
Even though you are calling
get_post_meta()It is not performing another query. It is retrieving the value from the post meta cache.Now if you don’t need the post meta you can set a flag that will eliminate the additional MySql query. To do this you set
'update_post_meta_cache' => falsein your args.You can also use get_post_custom() to return an array of all meta values so that you don’t have to use the meta_key for each.
I was not aware that WP cached the meta data, thanks Chris_O.