patternjavascriptMinor

Generic paging algorithm

Submitted by: @import:stackexchange-codereview·Mar 10, 2026·

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genericpagingalgorithm

Problem

I have made a simple pagination algorithm. It shows "next" and "previous" buttons when appropriate.

It also limits the amount of buttons if the page amount exceeds a certain amount, e.g. 1 2 ... 15 16 17 18 19 ... 99 100.

It works fine, but I feel it can be simplified.

function appendTruncateButtons(buttons, pageCount) {
  buttons.push("...");
  buttons.push(pageCount - 1);
  buttons.push(pageCount);
}

function prependTruncateButtons(buttons) {
  buttons.push(1);
  buttons.push(2);
  buttons.push("...");
}

function generateButtons(currentPage, pageCount, surroundingPageLinkSize) {
  var buttons = [];

  if (currentPage > 1) {
    buttons.push(" (7 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2));
  if (!truncate) {
    for (var i = 1; i  currentPage && currentPage > (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2);

    if (truncateEnd) {
      for (var j = 1; j ");
  }

  return buttons;
}
// generateButtons(currentPage, pageCount, surroundingPageLinkSize)
console.log(generateButtons(1, 100, 3));
console.log(generateButtons(50, 100, 3));
console.log(generateButtons(99, 100, 3));

Solution

var truncate = pageCount > (7 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2));
  if (!truncate) {
    for (var i = 1; i  currentPage && currentPage > (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2);

    if (truncateEnd) {
      for (var j = 1; j < (4 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2)); j++) {
        buttons.push(j);
      }
      appendTruncateButtons(buttons, pageCount);
    }
    else if (truncateBoth) {
      prependTruncateButtons(buttons);
      for (var k = (currentPage - surroundingPageLinkSize); k <= (currentPage + surroundingPageLinkSize); k++) {
        buttons.push(k);
      }
      appendTruncateButtons(buttons, pageCount);
    }
    else { // Truncate start
      prependTruncateButtons(buttons);
      for (var l = pageCount - (2 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2)); l <= pageCount; l++) {
        buttons.push(l);
      }
    }
  }

Note that all of these cases have essentially the same for loop.

var start = 1,
      end = pageCount;

  if (currentPage > surroundingPageLinkSize * 2) {
      start = currentPage - surroundingPageLinkSize;
      prependTruncateButtons(buttons);
  }

  if (currentPage < pageCount - surroundingPageLinkSize * 2 - 2) {
      end = currentPage + surroundingPageLinkSize;
  }

  for (var i = start; i <= end; i++) {
      buttons.push(i);
  }

  if (end < pageCount) {
      appendTruncateButtons(buttons);
  }

Now we call it just once, only changing the parameters.

We also only call the prepend and append methods once each. You could even pull those into this method if you wanted, as they are no longer repeated code.

I also like that this gets rid of the three single use Boolean variables. Since they weren't reused, they don't seem necessary.

I'm not sure if the output is an exact match for what you had originally, but it should give the same kind of display.

I didn't change it here, but consider changing buttons to pages or even pageNumbers. These are the pages that you want to make links or buttons that go there. But they aren't buttons yet.

Code Snippets

var truncate = pageCount > (7 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2));
  if (!truncate) {
    for (var i = 1; i <= pageCount; i++) {
      buttons.push(i);
    }
  }
  else {
    var truncateEnd = currentPage < (1 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2)),
        truncateBoth = (pageCount - (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2)) > currentPage && currentPage > (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2);

    if (truncateEnd) {
      for (var j = 1; j < (4 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2)); j++) {
        buttons.push(j);
      }
      appendTruncateButtons(buttons, pageCount);
    }
    else if (truncateBoth) {
      prependTruncateButtons(buttons);
      for (var k = (currentPage - surroundingPageLinkSize); k <= (currentPage + surroundingPageLinkSize); k++) {
        buttons.push(k);
      }
      appendTruncateButtons(buttons, pageCount);
    }
    else { // Truncate start
      prependTruncateButtons(buttons);
      for (var l = pageCount - (2 + (surroundingPageLinkSize * 2)); l <= pageCount; l++) {
        buttons.push(l);
      }
    }
  }

var start = 1,
      end = pageCount;

  if (currentPage > surroundingPageLinkSize * 2) {
      start = currentPage - surroundingPageLinkSize;
      prependTruncateButtons(buttons);
  }

  if (currentPage < pageCount - surroundingPageLinkSize * 2 - 2) {
      end = currentPage + surroundingPageLinkSize;
  }

  for (var i = start; i <= end; i++) {
      buttons.push(i);
  }

  if (end < pageCount) {
      appendTruncateButtons(buttons);
  }

Context

StackExchange Code Review Q#139658, answer score: 2

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