Python: list pagination

In this article we will see how to paginate a list in Python.

It involves using the comprehension to generate a list whose elements will be the pages that make up the main list, i.e. the sublists created through the slicing technique.

def paginate(items, per_page):
    pages = [items[i:i+per_page] for i in range(0, len(items), per_page)]
    return {
        'total': len(items),
        'pages_no': len(pages),
        'pages': pages
    }

Our function will return a dictionary containing the total number of entries in the main list, the number of pages it was split into, and the list of pages created.

The range() function is also used here with the third parameter which indicates the number of steps per iteration. For example, supposing we have a list items of 100 elements and a parameter per_page equal to 10, at the first iteration we will have:

pages = [items[0:0+10]... range(0, 100, 10)]

And so on.