Is product repository in Magento the optimal way to read product url

Question

I am reading a core function in Magento 2.3, the function is

\Magento\Wishlist\Helper\Data::getProductUrl

         * Retrieve URL to item Product
         *
         * @param  \Magento\Wishlist\Model\Item|\Magento\Catalog\Model\Product $item
         * @param  array $additional
         * @return string
         */
        public function getProductUrl($item, $additional = [])
        {
            if ($item instanceof \Magento\Catalog\Model\Product) {
                $product = $item;
            } else {
                $product = $item->getProduct();
            }
            $buyRequest = $item->getBuyRequest();
            if (is_object($buyRequest)) {
                $config = $buyRequest->getSuperProductConfig();
                if ($config && !empty($config['product_id'])) {
                    $product = $this->productRepository->getById(
                        $config['product_id'],
                        false,
                        $this->_storeManager->getStore()->getStoreId()
                    );
                }
            }
            return $product->getUrlModel()->getUrl($product, $additional);
        }

I am surprised to see the function calls the product repository to load the product url. I'd like to hear from people who perform code reviews/optimisation and understand whether this practice to call product repository is recommended or to be cautiously practised?

In this function, we see 2 use cases and one does not call repository. But yet this function can be called in a loop and my question is very much whether we potentially could run into page load issue or whether the cache does the rest?

thanks for looking into this

Answer 1

You should try and avoid individually loading products but instead load them as part of a larger product collection.

However see getbyid second argument. This improves performance for loading if you are not editing. This invokes a cache like mechanism.