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9.5 Pagination and Sorting (Pageable)

When dealing with thousands of records, displaying them all on a single page is poor for performance and user experience. Spring Data JPA provides the Pageable interface to implement pagination and sorting easily.

1. Pageable and Page Interfaces​

Spring Data JPA provides two core interfaces for handling pagination:

  • Pageable: An interface containing pagination request information (page number, size, and sorting criteria).
  • Page<T>: An interface that contains the resulting data list along with metadata like total pages and total elements.

2. Repository Layer Implementation​

Simply add a Pageable parameter to your repository method.

public interface MemberRepository extends JpaRepository<Member, Long> {
    
    // Search by name with pagination
    Page<Member> findByNameContaining(String name, Pageable pageable);
}

3. Controller Layer Implementation​

When you include Pageable as a parameter in a controller method, Spring automatically binds query parameters (e.g., ?page=0&size=10&sort=id,desc) to it.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api/members")
public class MemberController {

    private final MemberRepository memberRepository;

    @GetMapping
    public Page<MemberResponseDto> getMembers(
            @PageableDefault(size = 10, sort = "id", direction = Sort.Direction.DESC) Pageable pageable) {
        
        return memberRepository.findAll(pageable)
                .map(MemberResponseDto::from); // Convert Entity to DTO
    }
}

Key Query Parameters​

  • page: Page number (starting from 0).
  • size: Number of records per page.
  • sort: Sorting field and direction (sort=name,desc).

4. Understanding the Response Structure​

Returning a Page<T> type includes rich metadata in the JSON response:

{
  "content": [...],          // Actual data list
  "pageable": { ... },       // Pagination info
  "totalElements": 105,      // Total number of records
  "totalPages": 11,          // Total number of pages
  "last": false,             // Whether it's the last page
  "size": 10,                // Number of items per page
  "number": 0,               // Current page number
  "sort": { ... },           // Sorting info
  "numberOfElements": 10,    // Number of items on current page
  "first": true,             // Whether it's the first page
  "empty": false             // Whether the result is empty
}

5. Page vs. Slice​

  • Page<T>: Executes an additional count query to determine the total number of items (suitable for standard paginated lists).
  • Slice<T>: Only checks if a next page exists without a count query, providing better performance (suitable for infinite scrolls).
tip

In production environments with massive datasets, the count query can become a performance bottleneck. In such cases, consider using "Infinite Scroll" (Slice) or optimizing the count query with Querydsl.

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