Cursor Pagination Constraints with Non-Sequential Columns

Pagination Strategy for Large Datasets

Laravel provides several pagination methods to handle result sets, including paginate(), simplePaginate(), and cursor pagination. While offset-based pagination is standard, it often suffers from performance degradation on extremely large tables because the database must scan all preceding rows before reaching the requested offset.

Cursor Pagination Behavior

Cursor pagination is designed to mitigate performance issues and prevent the "drifting" effect where records are skipped or duplicated during page navigation. However, this mechanism relies on a unique, sequential column to track the position within the dataset.

When the underlying table uses a non-sequential identifier or a complex composite key, the default cursor behavior may not align with the desired sorting logic.

• How does Laravel handle cursor pagination when the sorting column is not the primary key?
• What are the constraints when implementing cursor pagination on columns that contain duplicate values?