# Pagy::Countless

This is a Pagy subclass that provides pagination without the need of any :count.

That may be especially useful in the following scenarios:

slow COUNT(*) query - result of large tables or poorly optimized DBs
large collections of records where the count is missing or irrelevant
minimalistic UI, infinite scrolling, APIs that don't benefit from a nav-bar
when the full nav-bar is not a requirement and/or performance is more desirable

This class provides support for extras that don't need the full set of pagination support or need to avoid the :count variable ( e.g. the countless extra). The class API is documented here, however you should not need to use this class directly because it is required and used internally by the extra.

# Caveats

In this class the :count variable is always nil, hence some feature that depends on it may have limited or no support:

# Features with limited support

The nav bar links after the current page cannot be fully displayed because they depends on the count.

Regardless the actual :size value we know only if the next page exists and we don't know the total pages

The series method reflects on the above.

# :overflow variable

The available values for the :overflow variable are :empty_page and :exception, missing the :last_page (which is not known in case of an exception).

# Features without support

The pagy_info and all the *_combo_nav_js helpers that use the total count are not supported.

# How countless pagination works

Instead of basing all the internal calculations on the :count variable (passed with the constructor), this class uses the number of actually fetched records to derive the pagination variables.

The size of the fetched records can be passed in a second step to the finalize method, which allows pagy to determine if there is a next page, or if the current page is the last page, or if the current request should raise a Pagy::OverflowError exception.

Retrieving these variables may be useful to supply a UI as complete as possible, when used with classic helpers, and can be skipped when it's not needed (like for navless pagination, infinite-scroll, etc.). See the countless extra for more details.

# Methods

The construction of the final Pagy::Countless object is split into 2 steps: the regular initialize method and the finalize method, which will use the fetched size to calculate the rest of the pagination integers.

The initial constructor takes the usual hash of variables, calculating only the requested limit and the offset, needed to query the page of records.

The actual calculation of all the internal variables for the pagination is calculated using the fetched size. The method returns the finalized instance object.