REST v2 - List Endpoints - Why is there is no Page parameter?

API Q&A
1

@OmarAlmonte, in the XML-RPC Data Query endpoint you can specify the Page to retrieve a particular set of records at a specific point. In other words it is works the same as the SQL “LIMIT” statement. There is no alternative in REST as the Page Token works in a different way by getting the next page of results.

Scenario, if large amount of sequential data is being pulled from the database, you would be getting it by “Id” ascending or descending order. If you need to stop and start the process you can specify the Page that you are on. This is helpful if you need to check data and then go to the next block of records. Or, if there is a problem at a particular page you could skip it and specify another page.

But with REST that is not possible, so you would have to do your own internal tracking. The problem with that is. If you processed a 100 pages of data and stopped, you would have to go back to very beginning again and go through those 100 pages again to get to where you want to be next.

What would be the reason for excluding this?

2

Hi Pav,

The reason is that V2 REST uses cursor-based pagination (next_page_token) because it generally scales better and provides consistent results for large and frequently changing datasets.

offset-based pagination (like page/offset) is not compatible with the V2 model, since it relies on offset-style access, which can become inconsistent and less efficient as data changes or grows.

3

Some background for those unfamiliar w/ the problem:
https://ankit21.medium.com/offset-vs-cursor-pagination-a-deep-dive-for-developers-02c5339fbf52