Paging of records refers to the process of dividing a collection of records or data into smaller, manageable units called pages. Each page typically contains a fixed number of records. This technique is commonly used in database management systems and file systems to organize and retrieve data efficiently.
Navigation in Paging concept
Out of say 100 records we will display the first 1 to 10 records and then give a link at the end to display the next 10 records. On click of this link we will display 11 to 20 records. At the same time the user may like to return to the first 1 to 10 pages so we will be displaying another link saying Previous. So we can move forward or backward to navigate between pages.
We can also display links for all the ten pages so users can directly go from 2nd page to 7th page. Tutorial PHP paging Part II →
Now let us have one table with nearly 35 records. We will
use the student table for this and you can use code sample at the end of this
tutorial to download the MySQL dump file to create the table along with the
script.
Advance Php paging script
The above menu is further improved if you have more records. For more than 1000 records and if you have 10 records per page then you have to show 100 links at the bottom of the page. That can be further simplified in advanced script to make links in groups. Click here to download the code and check the demo of advanced php paging. But it is better to understand the basic script first.
Backend or Frontend Paging
Here we discussed back end paging where data is collected in parts.
How Google Chart is used to create paging at front end →
In backend paging each time our script will collect a small chunk of records from the back end and display the same. It goes back again to collect another set of records based on user requirements.
Which one is better ?
Number of records
If the number of records is more then use backend scripts to collect based on user selection. Say if you want to display 10 records out of 1000 records then better to go for back end scripts and collect each set of records as and when the user requires.
If we have a total of 30 records and we want to display 10 records per page then we can download all 30 records and show a set of 10 records with the navigation facility. Here we need not run the back end scripts again to collect a different set of 10 records.
Speed
First time loading may take more time but since the operation is at front end so speed will be better if we use front end paging.
Functionality
It is the same in both cases and by using google chart library we can provide a good tool to users, however the same can be achieved by coding or by using different libraries while using back end scripts.