Query CCK field using node_load

Yes, but if you look in the documentation (api.drupal.org) and read the node_load function, you'll see it only looks in the core tables (node and node_revisions), not in the tables created by CCK. Sad but true.

Here's what I do in a module that needs to load a CCK node (I think I adapted most of this from the Taxonomy Import module):

function [your module name]_get_[desired content type]_nid($value) {
   static $cache = array();

   $key = "$value";      // I needed to make sure "00023864" values stayed as strings -- 
                                 // quotes unnecessary? I wasn't sure
   if (isset($cache[$key])) {
      $nid = $cache[$key];
   }
   else {
      $query = "SELECT nid FROM {table where your field lives} WHERE field_[your field name] = '%s' LIMIT 1 ";
      // if the field is an integer type, change '%s' above to %d
      $nid = db_result(db_query($query, $key));
      if ($nid) {
         $cache[$key] = $nid;
      }
         else $nid = '';
   }
   return $nid;
}

Someday, I'll make it more generic so I don't keep writing a new one for each odd content type I need to search (requires dynamically naming the static $cache variable, among other things).

Then, your code could just do ...

$node = node_load([your module name]_get_[desired content type]_nid($value));

Place the function in a module and activate it, and you'd be able to use it in a page or view or block's php code block too, I presume. Haven't tried it yet.

What I usually use it for is during custom node imports from flat files and other odd data we need. If the node exists, I pass the nid in the node array to node_save and it decides to do an update; if not, it's empty and node_save does an insert. Remember that if you re-use a CCK field in another content type, that field will be moved to another table, where the multiple content types share it. There's probably some cool way to deal with that problem, but I haven't bothered yet. We have a policy of NOT re-using CCK fields for other content types.

If you're not doing repeated hits on this function (as I do), the caching is probably unnecessary and could be deleted.

Hope that helps someone
--eon--

when you customize your node.tpl.php.
Since this is an old post you may have already thought of this long ago, but just in case...
I'm using it for a nodereference field that I do not want to link to its node -- instead I want it to display an image and a hyperlink to an external url.
So in node.tpl.php I capture the nodereference field, get the node id it references, load that node, then output the value of a CCK field "field_myfield" (which contains my hyperlink and image) like this:

$noderefnode = node_load($nid);
print $noderefnode->field_myfield[0]['value']; 

and voila, it prints the contents of my custom field.
Hope this is helpful.