Why should you care?

Product grids and chat history cannot load millions of docs at once. Page size 20 keeps APIs snappy on mobile networks in India.

See it live — copy this example

Open mongosh or MongoDB Compass, select database nosqlverse, then run the example. Change one field and run again.

// Page 1 and 2 with skip (ok for small data)
db.products.find().sort({ _id: 1 }).skip(0).limit(2)
db.products.find().sort({ _id: 1 }).skip(2).limit(2)

// Cursor-style next page after lastId
db.products.find({ _id: { $gt: ObjectId("64f000000000000000000002") } })
  .sort({ _id: 1 })
  .limit(2)

Run Example »

Edit the code below and click Run to see the result in Toolliyo’s live editor.

What happened?

• skip/limit implements classic pages.
• Cursor pagination asks for _id greater than the last seen id — scales better because it uses the index instead of skipping thousands.

Practice next

1. Insert 6 products.
2. Fetch page size 2 with skip 0, 2, 4.
3. build next-page using $gt on the last _id.
4. Paginate by createdAt: -1 with $lt cursor.
5. Return nextCursor in a mock API response shape.

Remember

limit caps page size. skip works for small offsets. Prefer cursor pagination for infinite scroll.

Flipkart product grid pages

Category API returns 24 items and a nextCursor based on sort keys.

Outcome: Shoppers scroll smoothly without duplicates when filters stay the same.