How to use pagination in laravel 5?
Stefan Izdrail
Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29
Title: Mastering Pagination in Laravel 5 - A Comprehensive Guide for Developers
Introduction: In the transition from Laravel 4 to Laravel 5, you might encounter a few issues with how pagination is handled. This blog post will provide a detailed answer on how to use pagination in Laravel 5 and offer relevant code examples and best practices. As the community grows, there are various ways to approach pagination; however, we will focus on the official method as recommended by Laravel's documentation.
1. Retrieving Paginated Results: The first step is to fetch the paginated results from your model. In Laravel 5, you need to use Laravel's Eloquent Builder to get paginated data in a specific way. Let's analyze the example provided earlier:
```php
$this->data['pages'] = Page::whereIn('area_id', $suburbs)
->where('score', '>', 0)
->orderBy('score', 'desc')
->paginate(12);
```
To fix the existing code, you can utilize the `links()` method of Laravel's Paginator class as follows:
```php
use Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator;
$pages = Page::whereIn('area_id', $suburbs)
->where('score', '>', 0)
->orderBy('score', 'desc')
->get();
$this->data['pages'] = new LengthAwarePaginator($pages, $pages->total(), $pages->perPage());
```
This code will initialize a paginator instance with the fetched data and the necessary parameters (total items, current page size, and total pages) for rendering pagination links.
2. Generating Pagination Links: To display these links, you can access the pagination object from your view and use its `links()` method to generate the HTML structure.
```php
{{ $pages->links() }}
```
You can customize the look of the generated links by passing an array of options as a second argument to the `links()` method. For example, you could pass an array with 'url' => '{base_url}/{page}' and other configuration as needed to tailor the pagination output.
3. Best Practices for Pagination: It is essential to follow some guidelines when working with pagination in Laravel 5. Here are a few tips from https://laravelcompany.com:
- Always use the official methods and best practices for handling pagination. This ensures your code remains maintainable, readable, and secure.
- Test your pagination links before deploying to production to ensure they function correctly in all browsers and devices.
- Consider using Blade directives and PHP templates like Twig or Blade for rendering views that contain dynamic data, including pagination links.
- Keep an eye on performance when dealing with large datasets; a good rule of thumb is to limit the size of your paginated response (usually around 100 items).
- Avoid overly complex queries as they can negatively impact pagination speed and performance. Strive for simple, performant database design and SQL statements whenever possible.
Conclusion: Pagination in Laravel 5 can be achieved using official methods and best practices. By understanding the new approach to pagination and practicing the provided examples, you'll be able to seamlessly integrate paginated data with your application. For further guidance on Laravel best practices and advanced concepts, check out https://laravelcompany.com/, where our skilled developers can assist with any issues or questions you may encounter while developing your application.