Pagination allows you to retrieve data (REST resources) in an efficient way that doesn’t strain the backend or frontend. More specifically, it allows you to partition data into digestible segments. This helps ensures smooth data transactions, which prevents server strain and enhances client experiences.

The exception is caught in the except block, and we return a JSON response with the error message and a status code of 400 (Bad Request). But before we jump into the best practices, let’s go over what is API pagination and the standard pagination techniques used in the present day. ● Pricing framework, i.e., if it supports usage-based, API call-based, user based, etc.

Can I Use Pagination with a Database?

Pagination thus helps to limit the number of results to help keep network traffic in check. These expectations don’t necessarily line up with the technical requirements of an API. In the era of big data and analytics, APIs are dealing with larger amounts of data in their backend than ever before. To truly stand their ground in today’s digital economy, APIs must be optimized for peak efficiency. API pagination is a key strategy for making sure your APIs run smoothly and effectively. As consumer expectations ramp up, API performance has never been more important than it is today.

API pagination refers to a technique used in API design and development to retrieve large data sets in a structured and manageable manner. When an API endpoint returns a large amount of data, pagination allows the data to be divided into smaller, more manageable chunks or pages. The API consumer or client can then request subsequent pages to retrieve additional data until the entire dataset has been retrieved. When working with APIs that return large datasets, efficient data retrieval becomes crucial for optimal performance and a smooth user experience.

Zenefits API Objects, Data Models & Endpoints

After you make the first GET request, you’re going to search the results for the NEXT link and use that to return the next page of results. You can use many different approaches to create pagination in REST. Queries just happen to be the easiest to implement as well as consistent, so we’re going to stick with that approach.

Like duplicate content (where you may need a canonical tag). Or pages with multiple canonical URLs (you should only have one canonical URL per page). For example, if a user wants to access a product on page five, they have to click the “Load more” button four times to get there. And Google might not be able to access all the content behind an infinite scroll depending on how it’s set up, according to Google’s John Mueller. Lazy loading is a technique that delays the loading of images and other content until the user scrolls down to that point on the page. This can help to speed up the loading time of the page and improve the user experience.

SEOptimer – SEO Audit & Reporting Tool.

This example from Razy Hassan via Dribbble uses a dropdown to select the number of records per page combined with a truncated numbered pagination. This might happen if your paginated pages have excessive duplicate content. “Load pagination in web application more” buttons let users click a button to load more content. This way, users have more control over when they see new content. After adding self-referencing canonical tags, check them to ensure they’re set up correctly.

• If a user is interested in more details about the product, they can click on the image/price/link with a call to action to learn more.
• Page-based pagination involves using a “page” parameter to specify the desired page number.
• Which could cause them to feel frustrated and leave your site.

Once users are on your site, then they have the opportunity to interact with other pages as structured by your pagination. Pagination refers to the process of breaking up content into multiple pages or sections for easy navigation and improved user experience. This is often used in cases where the content is lengthy or there are a large number of items to be displayed. It passes a query parameter with a timestamp to thoroughly paginate through an API. Api and api loading data is not their concern or even something they are aware of..

Get started with Zenefits API

Google may not be able to discover all of your content if it is hidden behind an AJAX interface, and it may take longer for new content to be indexed. To avoid these issues, ensure that your pagination is implemented correctly and that your content is accessible without using AJAX. But you should take into account, that this type of pagination can cause problems for SEO specialists, as search engine crawlers may not be able to access all the content on the page. This approach ensures stability when new data is added or existing data is modified. The cursor can be based on various criteria, such as a timestamp, a primary key, or an encoded representation of the record. Instead of relying on numeric offsets, cursor-based pagination uses a unique identifier or token to mark the position in the dataset.

Offset pagination is popular with apps powered by SQL databases, as limit and offset are already included with the SQL SELECT library. You can also configure your API to return pages based on when they were created. Time-based API pagination uses a CREATED command to return items created in a certain order. This can be useful if you want a list of all items created before a certain item, for example. Seek API pagination is another version of keyset API pagination.

Cursor-based pagination uses pointers to navigate the dataset, while keyset pagination relies on the values of specific fields to determine the next set of results. Cursors are used for dynamic datasets, while keyset pagination is efficient for large datasets with stable sorting. Pagination typically involves the use of parameters, such as offset and limit or cursor-based tokens, to control the size and position of the data subset to be retrieved. These parameters determine the starting point and the number of records to include on each page.

For example, this would respond with the next ten following albums. Since we’re just creating a mock-up, we’re hard-coding some of the variables for the sake of argument. We’ll set the page to always remain on 1 and the limit to 5. This allows you to calculate the total number of pages as well. In this example, we’ve got 12 programmers, divided by 5, and then rounded up using the ceil function.

Preserve Pagination Stability:

It’s a well-known statistic that 53% of web users will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. He writes and researches tech-related topics extensively for a wide variety of publications, including Forbes Finds. The main downside of seek API pagination is that it’s hard to implement custom sort orders. If you’re new to API pagination, we recommend reading our guide here. In his free time he loves to watch soccer matches, go on long runs in  parks, and explore local restaurants. Learn more about Merge’s approach to pagination, rate limiting, authentication, and more by scheduling a demo with one of our integration experts.