Pagination
Pagination splits a large result set into smaller pages, returning a slice at a time so APIs and UIs stay fast and memory-efficient.
Rather than returning thousands of rows at once, pagination returns a bounded page. The two common approaches are offset-based (limit/offset) and cursor- or keyset-based (fetch rows after a known value).
Offset pagination is simple but gets slower on deep pages and can skip or repeat rows when data changes. Keyset pagination is more efficient and stable for large, frequently-updated datasets.
A good REST API exposes pagination through query parameters, so clients control page size and position without custom endpoints.
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