How do you handle different API pagination methods across services?

[Jack.L]

I’m building a small dashboard that pulls data from several cloud services, and the biggest friction point so far has been pagination. Every API seems to implement it differently—some use page and limit, others rely on offsets, cursor tokens, or next-page URLs. What’s making this tricky is keeping the client code clean while dealing with all these pagination styles at once. I’m starting to wonder whether the right approach is to normalize everything behind a small adapter layer or to let each integration expose its own pagination logic. For those who’ve handled this in real projects, how do you usually balance pagination, rate limits, and error handling when multiple APIs are involved?

[George87]

I’ve been trying to build a small dashboard that pulls data from a few different cloud services, and I keep running into the same wall—every API seems to handle pagination in a completely different way. I just spent an entire afternoon wrestling with one that uses cursor-based pagination, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m overcomplicating my client code. How do you all manage this when you’re dealing with multiple services at once?

[HarperEH]

That sounds frustrating I know the feeling when every API uses a different pagination style and you end up writing glue code instead of real logic pagination is a thorn in dashboards what small win would help you push through this week?

[Abigail.T]

Think of paging as a tiny adapter layer you own you build a standard interface for pages that your dashboard code consumes then you implement adapters for each service to translate their pagination into the standard shape you need you still fetch in a loop until nothing left do you see how this could reduce the surface area?

[SavannahPB]

Maybe the problem is not your client but the idea of trying to unify diverse APIs at the client edge I am skeptical that one small wrapper can cover all the quirks without leaking complexity what would it look like if we paid more attention to server side pagination feedback?

[Olivia47]

Reframe the task as a data stream where you request chunks as you go and let the producer decide how many items to send that shifts focus from locking onto a page boundary to handling a flow of data where pagination becomes a concept not a choke point.

[Hannah64]

Error handling and backoff are where a lot of the napkin math hides you can tuck a common retry policy into the adapter so the dashboard surface stays clean and you only model a simple cursor move at the UI level lesson learned is to automate the boring parts and push variability into the adapters as much as you can.

[Jonathan99]

Try a small shim library that defines a single paging contract and writes adapters for each service before you build the whole world around it you can iterate quickly and keep the UI simple pagination remains a backend concern more than a frontend battle.