# Metadata Extra

Provide the pagination metadata to Javascript frameworks like Vue.js, react.js, etc.

It adds a single method to the backend that you can serve as JSON to your favorite javascript framework.

# Synopsis

pagy.rb (initializer)
require 'pagy/extras/metadata'

Controller (action)
pagy, records = pagy(collection)
render json: { data: records,
               pagy: pagy_metadata(pagy, ...) }

# Variables

Variable	Description	Default
`:metadata`	Array of names used to control the returned metadata	`[ :scaffold_url, :first_url, :prev_url, :page_url, :next_url, :last_url, :count, :page, :items, :vars, :pages, :last, :from, :to, :prev, :next, :series ]`

As usual, depending on the scope of the customization, you can set the :metadata variable globally or for a single pagy instance.

IMPORTANT: Don't rely on the broad default! You should explicitly set the :metadata variable with only the keys that you will actually use in the frontend, for obvious performance reasons. Besides you can also add other pagy method names not included in the default.

# The `:scaffold_url` key

This is a special url string that you can use as the scaffold to build real page urls in your frontend (instead of producing them on the backend).

It is a pagination url/path (complete with all the params) containing the __pagy_page__ placeholder in place of the page number (e.g. '/foo?page=__pagy_page__&bar=baz')

You can generate all the actual links on the frontend by simply replacing the placeholder with the actual page number you want to link to.

In javascript you can do something like:

page_url = scaffold_url.replace(/__pagy_page__/, page_number)

This is particularly useful when you want to build some dynamic pagination UI (e.g. similar to what the pagy_*combo_js generates), but right in your frontend app, saving backend resources with obvious performance benefits.

`scaffold_url` not necessary for simple cases

For simple cases you might want to use the other few :*_url metadata directly, instead of using the :scaffold_url.

# Methods

This extra adds a single method to the Pagy::Backend (available in your controllers).

This method returns a hash with the keys/values defined by the :metadata variable. When true, the absolute boolean argument will cause all the :*_url metadata to be absolute instead of relative.