How to set up Pagination using Xano and Bravo Studio

Greetings, fellow builders! In this blog post, we'll dive into the world of pagination and explore how to implement it seamlessly in your Xano and Bravo applications. Pagination is a crucial feature that enhances the user experience by breaking down large datasets into manageable chunks, making it easier to navigate and consume information.

Why Pagination Matters

When dealing with extensive data sets, presenting all the records at once can lead to slow load times, cluttered interfaces, and a subpar user experience. Pagination solves this issue by dividing the data into smaller, more digestible pages, allowing users to navigate through the information more efficiently.

Setting Up Pagination in Xano

Xano offers built-in support for pagination, making it a breeze to implement in your backend services. Let's walk through the steps to enable pagination in your Xano application:

1. Enable Paging: In your Xano endpoint configuration, toggle on the "Paging" option. This setting will activate pagination for the specific endpoint you're working on.
2. Configure Pagination Parameters: Xano supports several pagination strategies, including offset, page, and seek. For this guide, we'll focus on the "page" strategy, which is the most commonly used approach.
3. Set Default Page Size (Optional): You can optionally set a default page size, which determines the number of records displayed per page. If you prefer to override this setting dynamically, you can skip this step.
4. Create an External Parameter: To enable dynamic pagination control from your frontend application, create an external parameter in Xano. Name it "page," and set its type to "Integer." This parameter will allow you to specify the desired page number when making requests to your backend.
5. Map the External Parameter: In your Xano function stack, create a variable called "externalPaging" as a JSON object. Set the "path" property of this object to "page" and map its value to the "page" external parameter you created earlier.
6. Position the Pagination Logic: Ensure that the "externalPaging" variable is created before the query that retrieves your data. This way, the pagination logic will be applied before fetching the records.
7. Pass the Pagination Parameter to Bravo: When making requests to your Bravo backend from your frontend application, include the "page" query parameter with the desired page number. For example, if you want to fetch the second page of results, your request URL might look like `https://your-bravo-app.com/api/your-endpoint?page=2`.

Handling Pagination in Bravo

Bravo, the serverless backend platform, provides built-in support for pagination as well. To ensure seamless integration with Xano's pagination implementation, follow these steps in Bravo:

1. Configure Pagination Type: In your Bravo endpoint settings, select the "Page" pagination type under the "Pagination" section. This aligns with the pagination strategy we chose in Xano.
2. Update Pagination Parameter: Locate the "Pagination Parameter" field and update it to match the parameter name you used in Xano (in our case, "page").

By following these steps, you've successfully set up pagination in both Xano and Bravo, ensuring a smooth flow of data between your frontend and backend applications.

Testing and Validation

To validate that pagination is working correctly, follow these steps:

1. Test with Sample Data: Ensure you have a sufficiently large dataset to test pagination. In the Xano example, we used a dataset with 15 records.
2. Execute Requests with Different Page Numbers: Use tools like Bravo Studio or your preferred API testing tool to send requests with different page numbers as query parameters (e.g., `?page=1`, `?page=2`, etc.).
3. Verify Response Data: Inspect the response data to ensure that only the expected number of records for the requested page is being returned.
4. Check Pagination Metadata (Optional): If you enabled pagination metadata in Xano, verify that the response includes accurate information about the total number of records, current page, and other relevant details.

By following this guide, you've successfully implemented pagination in your Xano and Bravo applications, ensuring a seamless user experience when working with large datasets. Embrace the power of no-code development and continue building amazing applications without sacrificing performance or usability.

Happy building, and keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible with Xano and Bravo!