Clean way to add media gallery images to product collection

Question

I have to display small images of products loaded by collection. Problem is (I think it is), that products (coming from collection) by default doesn't containt any images within. I have tried addAttributeToSelect(), but it seems to be more complex. Another possible solution is quering for image, inside loop for every product separately, but it seems to be impacting performance. I haven't found any predefined method to add media gallery to product collection. Has someone played with that?

EDIT: product->load('media_gallery') does work but I am not sure about it.. Is it impacting performance and is it clean way to achieve it?

Answer 1

If you look at the \Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\Collection class there is actually a method addMediaGalleryData that will add the media gallery data to the product collection.

/** @var \Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\Collection $productCollection */
$productCollection->addMediaGalleryData();

Example:

        /**
         * @return \Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\Collection
         */
        public function getProductsWithMedia()
        {
            /** @var \Magento\Catalog\Model\ResourceModel\Product\Collection $products */
            $products = $this->productCollection->addMediaGalleryData();

            return $products;
        }

That's it! Should give you all the data you need.