[dancer-users] Example of pagination with DBIC?

[John Stoffel]

Jacques> Since a GET will put parameters into the URL, you can just
Jacques> re-use the URL and change the page parameter.
Jacques> /?name=test&city=montreal&page=1 <- to change pages

So, I've been slowly hacking away at this and I think I have it mostly
working, but the question I have now is what is the best way to
build/modify the URL to support paging?

For example, I use the following URL 

   http://localhost:3000/?Name=&Sex=F&submit=Search

when I do my simple query.  My base page is 1 if I have multiple
results.  And after a bit of reading, I figure I can just use the
request->request_uri helper to get when I need and strip out more
stuff.  Something like this, assuming I have more than 10 (default)
results to show, etc:

  my $page_prev = $page - 1;
  my $page_next = $page + 1;
  my $rec_start = (($page-1) * $limit) + 1;
  my $rec_end = ($page * $limit) - 1;
  my $page_prev_uri = "";
  my $page_next_uri = "";
  
  if ($page_prev > 1) {
    my $uri = request->request_uri;
    $uri =~ s/\&page=\d+//;
    $page_prev_uri = join("",$uri, '&page=' . $page-1);
  }
  if ($page_next < POSIX::ceil($count / $limit)) {
    my $uri = request->request_uri;
    $uri =~ s/\&page=\d+//;
    $page_next_uri = join("",$uri,'&page=',$page+1);
  }

All this is just basic math and works fine.  The trick seems to be in
the URI re-writing, which *almost* works.  So my search form just has:

      <FORM ACTION="/" METHOD="get">
	Search Name: <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="Name" /><br>
	Sex: <SELECT NAME="Sex">
	  <OPTION>
	  <OPTION VALUE="F">Female</OPTION>
	  <OPTION VALUE="M">Male</OPTION>
	  <OPTION VALUE="U">Unknown</OPTION>
	</SELECT>
	<INPUT TYPE="submit" NAME="submit" VALUE="Search" />
      </form>

And the URI when submitted looks like:

   /?Name=&Sex=F&submit=Search

So my questions are:

1. Should I strip off the "&submit=Search" part when I build my <A
   HREF=...>prev</A> and next links?  

2. Should I pre-place a <INPUT type="hidden" name="page" value="1" />
   field in my search form, with the obvious updating if I'm searching
   on a different page?  

3. Right now I'm using a single template to both show the search form
   and the results.  I'm thinking I really want to split this
   up... and of course I want to allow the users to "refine" a search
   so I need to pass back defaults for the various forms.  Time to
   learn how Dancer does sessions...  :-)

Thanks,
John