Avoid the Pitfall of node_load_multiple API Function

In a large website with many nodes, stop using the node_load_multiple function. It potentially limits the site growing.

According to the document: "This function should be used whenever you need to load more than one node from the database." But, I want to say that we should avoid using this function as this open the door to system crash in the future.

I had written a blog before Design a Drupal website with a million nodes in mind. I had used this function as an example. It is true that node_load_multiple function enhance the performance. But, it comes with a price. When we load thousands of node into the memory, it exhausts the web server memory instantly. Then we get this infamous message: "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate XYZ bytes) in ...".

This issue brought me to an attention when I am reading the code done by one of the Drupal shops. In one of the recently launched high-profile project, the function is used to load all the show nodes in the system. It sounds to be troublesome to me at the beginning. We can not load all show nodes if we are not sure how many it will be? Where there are a small amount of node in the system, that is fine. But if it is for a system there are over hundred thousand nodes, that is a big problem. As time goes by, we add more shows into the system; The utility function needs more memory to handle it. The physical memory limits the ability to add infinity show nodes into the system.

What is the best way to handle this situation? Avoid using the node_load_multiple function. If we have to use the node_load_multiple, limit the number of the node for node_load_multiple to load.