Pagination

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

Pagination is splitting a huge list of results into pages. Instead of returning ALL 100,000 users at once (which would crash everything), you return 20 at a time. The client asks for page 1, page 2, etc. It's exactly like pages in a book.

Real Talk

Pagination is a technique for dividing large datasets into smaller, manageable subsets (pages) that are returned incrementally. It reduces response size, improves performance, and prevents memory overload. Common implementations include offset/limit and cursor-based pagination.

When You'll Hear This

"The API returns 25 results per page by default." / "Implement pagination before the user table grows too big."