Pagination

If we want to show a set of data that is huge, we can use pagination and this feature is available with cake php 4 which is very easy to use.

We have a table titled “articles” with following data −

Let us use pagination to display the data in the form of pages, instead of showing them all together.

Example

Make Changes in the config/routes.php file as shown in the following program.

config/routes.php

<?php
use Cake\Http\Middleware\CsrfProtectionMiddleware;
use Cake\Routing\Route\DashedRoute;
use Cake\Routing\RouteBuilder;
$routes->setRouteClass(DashedRoute::class);
$routes->scope('/', function (RouteBuilder $builder) {
   $builder->registerMiddleware('csrf', new CsrfProtectionMiddleware([
      'httpOnly' => true,
   ]));
   $builder->applyMiddleware('csrf');
   //$builder->connect('/pages',['controller'=>'Pages','action'=>'display', 'home']);
   $builder->connect('posts',['controller'=>'Posts','action'=>'index']);
   $builder->fallbacks();
});

Create a PostsController.php file at src/Controller/PostsController.php. Copy the following code in the controller file. Ignore, if already created.

src/Controller/PostsController.php

<?php
   namespace App\Controller;
   use App\Controller\AppController;
   class PostsController extends AppController {
      public function index(){
         $this->loadModel('articles');
         $articles = $this->articles->find('all')->order(['articles.id ASC']);
         $this->set('articles', $this->paginate($articles, ['limit'=> '3']));
      }
   }
?>

The data from articles table is fetched using −

$this->loadModel('articles');
$articles = $this->articles->find('all')->order(['articles.id ASC']);

To apply pagination and we would show the data with 3 per records and the same is done as follows −

$this->set('articles', $this->paginate($articles, ['limit'=> '3']));

This is enough to activate pagination on the articles tables.

Create a directory Posts at src/Template and under that directory create a Viewfile called index.php. Copy the following code in that file.

src/Template/Posts/index.php

<div>
<?php foreach ($articles as $key=>$article) {?>
<a href="#">
   <div>
   <p><?= $article->title ?> </p>
   <p><?= $article->details ?></p>
   </div>
</a>
<br/>
<?php
}
?>
<ul class="pagination">
<?= $this->Paginator->prev("<<") ?>
<?= $this->Paginator->numbers() ?>
<?= $this->Paginator->next(">>") ?>
</ul>
</div>

The pagination for the list of pages is done as follows −

<ul class="pagination">
<?= $this->Paginator->prev("<<") ?>
<?= $this->Paginator->numbers() ?>
<?= $this->Paginator->next(">>") ?>
</ul>

Execute the above example by visiting the following URL −

http://localhost/cakephp4/posts

Output

When you run the code, you will see the following output −

Click on the numbers below, to switch to next page, or use the next or previous button.

For example

You will see that page=2 is appended to the page url in the browser.