Understanding Offset and Cursor-Based Pagination in Node.js
Pagination means dividing a big chunk of data into smaller pages. It unlocks performance benefits for the backend, while also improving UX by sending manageable pieces of data to a client.
In this article, we'll explore offset-based and cursor-based server-side pagination approaches, compare them, and implement cursor-based pagination in Node.js.
The significant difference between them lies in where the pagination process takes place. In client-side pagination, the complete dataset is fetched from a database and partitioned into pages of a given size on the client side. Meanwhile, in server-side pagination, the client only fetches the data required for a given page number. When a user navigates to the next page, the client makes a fresh call to the server for new data.
You can find the env variables in config.js at the project's root level. Rename the .env.example file to .env and fill in your desired values for the environment variables.
