Pagination

class Cake\Controller\Component\PaginatorComponent

One of the main obstacles of creating flexible and user-friendly web applications is designing an intuitive user interface. Many applications tend to grow in size and complexity quickly, and designers and programmers alike find they are unable to cope with displaying hundreds or thousands of records. Refactoring takes time, and performance and user satisfaction can suffer.

Displaying a reasonable number of records per page has always been a critical part of every application and used to cause many headaches for developers. CakePHP eases the burden on the developer by providing a quick, easy way to paginate data.

Pagination in CakePHP is offered by a component in the controller. You then use Cake\View\Helper\PaginatorHelper in your view templates to generate pagination controls.

Basic Usage

To paginate a query we first need to load the PaginatorComponent:

class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public function initialize()
    {
        parent::initialize();
        $this->loadComponent('Paginator');
    }
}

Once loaded we can paginate an ORM table class or Query object:

public function index()
{
    // Paginate the ORM table.
    $this->set('articles', $this->paginate($this->Articles));

    // Paginate a partially completed query
    $query = $this->Articles->find('published');
    $this->set('articles', $this->paginate($query));
}

Advanced Usage

PaginatorComponent supports more complex use cases by configuring the $paginate controller property or as the $settings argument to paginate(). These conditions service as the basis for you pagination queries. They are augmented by the sort, direction, limit, and page parameters passed in from the URL:

class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public $paginate = [
        'limit' => 25,
        'order' => [
            'Articles.title' => 'asc'
        ]
    ];
}

TIP

Default order options must be defined as an array.

While you can include any of the options supported by Cake\ORM\Table::find() such as fields in your pagination settings. It is cleaner and simpler to bundle your pagination options into a Custom Find Method. You can use your finder in pagination by using the finder option:

class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public $paginate = [
        'finder' => 'published',
    ];
}

If your finder method requires additional options you can pass those as values for the finder:

class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    // find articles by tag
    public function tags()
    {
        $tags = $this->request->getParam('pass');

        $customFinderOptions = [
            'tags' => $tags
        ];
        // We're using the $settings argument to paginate() here.
        // But the same structure could be used in $this->paginate
        //
        // Our custom finder is called findTagged inside ArticlesTable.php
        // which is why we're using `tagged` as the key.
        // Our finder should look like:
        // public function findTagged(Query $query, array $options) {
        $settings = [
            'finder' => [
                'tagged' => $customFinderOptions
            ]
        ];
        $articles = $this->paginate($this->Articles, $settings);
        $this->set(compact('articles', 'tags'));
    }
}

In addition to defining general pagination values, you can define more than one set of pagination defaults in the controller. The name of each model can be used as a key in the $paginate property:

class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public $paginate = [
        'Articles' => [],
        'Authors' => [],
    ];
}

The values of the Articles and Authors keys could contain all the properties that a basic $paginate array would.

Once you have used paginate() to create results. The controller's request will be updated with paging parameters. You can access the pagination metadata at $this->request->getParam('paging').

Simple Pagination

By default pagination uses a count() query to calculate the size of the result set so that page number links can be rendered. On very large datasets this count query can be very expensive. In situations where you only want to show 'Next' and 'Previous' links you can use the 'simple' paginator which does not do a count query:

public function initialize()
{
    parent::initialize();

    // Load the paginator component with the simple paginator strategy.
    $this->loadComponent('Paginator', [
        'paginator' => new \Cake\Datasource\SimplePaginator(),
    ]);
}

When using the SimplePaginator you will not be able to generate page numbers, counter data, links to the last page, or total record count controls.

Added in version 3.9.0

SimplePaginator was added.

Using the PaginatorComponent Directly

If you need to paginate data from another component you may want to use the PaginatorComponent directly. It features a similar API to the controller method:

$articles = $this->Paginator->paginate($articleTable->find(), $config);

// Or
$articles = $this->Paginator->paginate($articleTable, $config);

The first parameter should be the query object from a find on table object you wish to paginate results from. Optionally, you can pass the table object and let the query be constructed for you. The second parameter should be the array of settings to use for pagination. This array should have the same structure as the $paginate property on a controller. When paginating a Query object, the finder option will be ignored. It is assumed that you are passing in the query you want paginated.

Paginating Multiple Queries

You can paginate multiple models in a single controller action, using the scope option both in the controller's $paginate property and in the call to the paginate() method:

// Paginate property
public $paginate = [
    'Articles' => ['scope' => 'article'],
    'Tags' => ['scope' => 'tag']
];

// In a controller action
$articles = $this->paginate($this->Articles, ['scope' => 'article']);
$tags = $this->paginate($this->Tags, ['scope' => 'tag']);
$this->set(compact('articles', 'tags'));

The scope option will result in PaginatorComponent looking in scoped query string parameters. For example, the following URL could be used to paginate both tags and articles at the same time:

/dashboard?article[page]=1&tag[page]=3

See the Paginator Helper Multiple section for how to generate scoped HTML elements and URLs for pagination.

Added in version 3.3.0

Multiple Pagination was added in 3.3.0

Paginating the Same Model multiple Times

To paginate the same model multiple times within a single controller action you need to define an alias for the model. See Table Registry Usage for additional details on how to use the table registry:

// In a controller action
$this->paginate = [
    'ArticlesTable' => [
        'scope' => 'published_articles',
        'limit' => 10,
        'order' => [
            'id' => 'desc',
        ],
    ],
    'UnpublishedArticlesTable' => [
        'scope' => 'unpublished_articles',
        'limit' => 10,
        'order' => [
            'id' => 'desc',
        ],
    ],
];

// Register an additional table object to allow differentiating in pagination component
TableRegistry::config('UnpublishedArticles', [
    'className' => 'App\Model\Table\ArticlesTable',
    'table' => 'articles',
    'entityClass' => 'App\Model\Entity\Article',
]);

$publishedArticles = $this->paginate(
    $this->Articles->find('all', [
        'scope' => 'published_articles'
    ])->where(['published' => true])
);

$unpublishedArticles = $this->paginate(
    TableRegistry::getTableLocator()->get('UnpublishedArticles')->find('all', [
        'scope' => 'unpublished_articles'
    ])->where(['published' => false])
);

Control which Fields Used for Ordering

By default sorting can be done on any non-virtual column a table has. This is sometimes undesirable as it allows users to sort on un-indexed columns that can be expensive to order by. You can set the whitelist of fields that can be sorted using the sortWhitelist option. This option is required when you want to sort on any associated data, or computed fields that may be part of your pagination query:

public $paginate = [
    'sortWhitelist' => [
        'id', 'title', 'Users.username', 'created'
    ]
];

Any requests that attempt to sort on fields not in the whitelist will be ignored.

Limit the Maximum Number of Rows per Page

The number of results that are fetched per page is exposed to the user as the limit parameter. It is generally undesirable to allow users to fetch all rows in a paginated set. The maxLimit option asserts that no one can set this limit too high from the outside. By default CakePHP limits the maximum number of rows that can be fetched to 100. If this default is not appropriate for your application, you can adjust it as part of the pagination options, for example reducing it to 10:

public $paginate = [
    // Other keys here.
    'maxLimit' => 10
];

If the request's limit param is greater than this value, it will be reduced to the maxLimit value.

Joining Additional Associations

Additional associations can be loaded to the paginated table by using the contain parameter:

public function index()
{
    $this->paginate = [
        'contain' => ['Authors', 'Comments']
    ];

    $this->set('articles', $this->paginate($this->Articles));
}

Out of Range Page Requests

The PaginatorComponent will throw a NotFoundException when trying to access a non-existent page, i.e. page number requested is greater than total page count.

So you could either let the normal error page be rendered or use a try catch block and take appropriate action when a NotFoundException is caught:

// Prior to 3.6 use Cake\Network\Exception\NotFoundException
use Cake\Http\Exception\NotFoundException;

public function index()
{
    try {
        $this->paginate();
    } catch (NotFoundException $e) {
        // Do something here like redirecting to first or last page.
        // $this->request->getParam('paging') will give you required info.
    }
}

Pagination in the View

Check the Cake\View\Helper\PaginatorHelper documentation for how to create links for pagination navigation.