Drupal has very powerful paging capabilities. This document explains it usage and capabilities using examples. Lets start by creating a module called paggar. If you are wondering why I used such strange sounding name for the modules, her goes a simple explanation. pager module already exists and pagger is not a very polite word.

paggar.info

name = paggar
description = paging example
package = mole
core = 6.x
version = 6.3
project = mole

paggar.module

// paggar.module - molecularsciences.org

// help
function paggar_help($section)
{
switch ($section) {
case 'admin/modules#description':
return t('Paging Example');
}
}

// permissions
function paggar_perm()
{
return array('enable paggar');
}

function paggar_menu()
{
$items['paggar'] = array(
'title' => 'Paging example',
'page callback' => 'paggar_example',
'access callback' => 'user_access',
'access arguments' => array('enable paggar'),
'type' => MENU_CALLBACK
);
return $items;
}

// paging example
function paggar_example()
{
// title for the page
drupal_set_title("Paging example");

// query
$q = "select distinct title from {node} where type like 'page'";

$rs = db_query($q);
$o = '<ul>';
while($rw = db_fetch_object($rs))
{
$o .= '<li>' . $rw->title . '</li>';
}
$o .= '</ul>';

return $o;
}

This module would print the titles of all page nodes. No paging yet. To add paging, we need to provide the following:

• define how many nodes to print per page
• specify a count query e.g. select count(*) from ...
• use pager_query() instead of db_query()
• use pager_theme() to print paging links

// paging example
function paggar_example()
{
// title for the page
drupal_set_title("Paging example");

// how many nodes per page
$nodes_per_page = 20;

// query
$q = "select distinct title from {node} where type like 'page'";

// count query
$cq = "select count(distinct title) from {node} where type like 'page'";

$rs = pager_query($q,$nodes_per_page,0,$cq);

$o = '<ul>';
while($rw = db_fetch_object($rs))
{
$o .= '<li>' . $rw->title . '</li>';
}
$o .= '</ul>';

// print paging links
$o .= theme('pager', NULL, 10);

return $o;
}

You must pass the query, an integer specifying the number of entries to display per page, paging identifier, and the count query to the pager_query