Pagination divides a large result set into smaller portions that an API can request and a user interface can display separately. It becomes important when returning thousands of records would increase waiting time and make the interface difficult to use. section 4.3
A practical pagination design addresses two related concerns:
- Scale API responses for large datasets instead of returning every record in one request. section 4.1
- Let the API request portions of the data, even when the user interface already supports dividing a large dataset. section 4.3
- Treat pagination as part of a production-ready API alongside asynchronous processing and acceptable request wait times. section 4.1 section 4.3
ACH records
An ACH-processing API might contain thousands of records. Returning them all at once can delay the response and overwhelm the interface; pagination lets the client request and display a smaller portion at a time. section 4.3
