Pagination (PageNumber, Cursor, Limit/Offset) in Django - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Pagination with Django REST Framework

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple API for a bookstore. The API should return a list of books, but since there could be many books, you want to show only a few books per page. This is called pagination.We will use Django REST Framework's built-in pagination to split the list of books into pages.

🎯 Goal: Create a Django REST Framework API view that returns a paginated list of books using PageNumberPagination. You will set up the data, configure pagination, apply it in the view, and complete the setup to see paginated results.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of book dictionaries with exact titles and authors

Set a pagination page size variable

Use Django REST Framework's PageNumberPagination in the API view

Complete the API view to return paginated book data

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs often return large lists of data. Pagination helps split data into pages so users can load and see data easily without waiting for everything at once.

💼 Career

Backend developers frequently implement pagination in APIs to improve performance and user experience. Knowing Django REST Framework pagination is a valuable skill.

1

DATA SETUP: Create a list of books

Create a list called books with these exact dictionaries: {'title': 'Book A', 'author': 'Author 1'}, {'title': 'Book B', 'author': 'Author 2'}, and {'title': 'Book C', 'author': 'Author 3'}.

Django

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with three dictionaries exactly as shown.

2

CONFIGURATION: Set pagination page size

Create a variable called PAGE_SIZE and set it to 2 to limit books per page.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'Book A', 'author': 'Author 1'},
    {'title': 'Book B', 'author': 'Author 2'},
    {'title': 'Book C', 'author': 'Author 3'}
]
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just create a variable named PAGE_SIZE and assign 2.

3

CORE LOGIC: Use PageNumberPagination in API view

Import PageNumberPagination from rest_framework.pagination. Create a class BookPagination that inherits from PageNumberPagination and set its page_size to PAGE_SIZE. Then create a function book_list that takes request, uses BookPagination to paginate books, and returns the paginated data as a response.

Django

books = [
    {'title': 'Book A', 'author': 'Author 1'},
    {'title': 'Book B', 'author': 'Author 2'},
    {'title': 'Book C', 'author': 'Author 3'}
]

PAGE_SIZE = 2

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the Django REST Framework pagination classes and methods exactly as shown.

4

COMPLETION: Add URL pattern for the API view

Import path from django.urls. Create a list called urlpatterns with one path entry: the URL 'books/' mapped to the book_list view.

Django

from rest_framework.pagination import PageNumberPagination
from rest_framework.response import Response

books = [
    {'title': 'Book A', 'author': 'Author 1'},
    {'title': 'Book B', 'author': 'Author 2'},
    {'title': 'Book C', 'author': 'Author 3'}
]

PAGE_SIZE = 2

class BookPagination(PageNumberPagination):
    page_size = PAGE_SIZE


def book_list(request):
    paginator = BookPagination()
    page = paginator.paginate_queryset(books, request)
    return paginator.get_paginated_response(page)

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Define urlpatterns with path 'books/' pointing to book_list.