When building data-heavy applications in ASP.NET Core, it’s crucial to fetch data efficiently. Imagine a scenario where your database contains thousands of records — loading all of them at once into the UI would be highly inefficient and would slow down performance significantly.

That’s where pagination comes in — breaking down the data into smaller, manageable chunks.

What is Pagination?

Pagination is the process of dividing a large dataset into discrete pages. Each page contains a fixed number of records, typically controlled by two variables:

pageNumber – current page number.
pageSize – number of records per page.

Why Use Pagination in EF Core?

Using pagination offers multiple benefits:

• Improved performance — Load only the data you need.
• Better user experience — Avoid overwhelming users with too much data.
• Scalability — Handle larger datasets easily without memory issues.

Implementing Pagination in EF Core

Conclusion

Pagination is essential for building high-performance, scalable web applications with large datasets. With just a few lines of code, Entity Framework Core makes pagination seamless and efficient.

Use .Skip() and .Take() wisely, combine them with filtering and sorting, and your app will scale smoothly!