limit method for pagination in MongoDB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using the limit Method for Pagination in MongoDB

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small online bookstore database. The books collection contains many book documents. You want to show only a few books at a time on the website to make browsing easier.

🎯 Goal: Build a MongoDB query that uses the limit method to fetch only the first 3 books from the books collection for pagination.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a books collection with 5 book documents, each having title and author fields.

Create a variable pageSize and set it to 3.

Write a query that finds all books and uses the limit method with pageSize to get only 3 books.

Assign the query result to a variable firstPageBooks.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Pagination is used in websites and apps to show data in small chunks, improving user experience and performance.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use limit and pagination queries is essential for backend developers working with databases to build efficient data retrieval systems.

1

Create the books collection with 5 book documents

Create a variable called books and assign it an array with these 5 objects exactly: { title: 'Book A', author: 'Author 1' }, { title: 'Book B', author: 'Author 2' }, { title: 'Book C', author: 'Author 3' }, { title: 'Book D', author: 'Author 4' }, and { title: 'Book E', author: 'Author 5' }.

MongoDB

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an array of objects with the exact titles and authors given.

2

Set the page size for pagination

Create a variable called pageSize and set it to 3.

MongoDB

const books = [
  { title: 'Book A', author: 'Author 1' },
  { title: 'Book B', author: 'Author 2' },
  { title: 'Book C', author: 'Author 3' },
  { title: 'Book D', author: 'Author 4' },
  { title: 'Book E', author: 'Author 5' }
];

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use const pageSize = 3; to set the number of books per page.

3

Write a query to get only the first 3 books using limit

Write a query using db.books.find() and chain the limit(pageSize) method to get only 3 books. Assign the result to a variable called firstPageBooks.

MongoDB

const books = [
  { title: 'Book A', author: 'Author 1' },
  { title: 'Book B', author: 'Author 2' },
  { title: 'Book C', author: 'Author 3' },
  { title: 'Book D', author: 'Author 4' },
  { title: 'Book E', author: 'Author 5' }
];

const pageSize = 3;

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use db.books.find().limit(pageSize) to get the first 3 books.

4

Complete the pagination setup by exporting the result

Add a line to export the firstPageBooks variable using module.exports = firstPageBooks; so it can be used elsewhere.

MongoDB

const books = [
  { title: 'Book A', author: 'Author 1' },
  { title: 'Book B', author: 'Author 2' },
  { title: 'Book C', author: 'Author 3' },
  { title: 'Book D', author: 'Author 4' },
  { title: 'Book E', author: 'Author 5' }
];

const pageSize = 3;

const firstPageBooks = db.books.find().limit(pageSize);

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use module.exports = firstPageBooks; to export the query result.