Pagination

Pagination is a technique for dividing a large collection of items into discrete pages, allowing users to navigate through a dataset without loading all items at once. It is widely used in web interfaces, APIs, and database queries to manage performance, bandwidth, and user experience when presenting lists, search results, or records.

There are several pagination methods. Offset-based pagination uses a page number and a page size or an offset value to fetch a subset of items. It is simple but can become inefficient with large offsets and may suffer from data drift when inserts or deletes occur. Cursor-based, or keyset pagination, relies on a reference value from a secured, typically indexed column (such as a unique ID or timestamp) to fetch the next page. This method scales better for large datasets but can be less intuitive and requires careful handling of sorting and reverse navigation. Hybrid approaches and tokens can combine characteristics of both.

Implementations commonly specify deterministic ordering, typically by a primary key or timestamp, to ensure stable pages. Typical parameters include page and pageSize, or limit and offset, and often a cursor or nextToken for successive pages. Providing a total item count can help users gauge progress, but may impact performance on large datasets. In APIs, opaque cursors hide internal state and can improve resilience to concurrent updates.

Performance considerations include indexing the sort keys, avoiding expensive offsets, and choosing keyset pagination for high-traffic endpoints. UX and accessibility considerations involve clear navigation controls, predictable behavior, and, for search engines, consistent canonical URLs with appropriate rel attributes where applicable. Pagination remains a core pattern for delivering scalable, user-friendly data interfaces.