Implementing Pagination for WordPress Posts in Next.js

Building a blog with WordPress as a headless CMS and Next.js as the frontend is becoming increasingly popular. One crucial feature for any content-heavy website is pagination. Today, we’ll explore how to implement efficient pagination for WordPress posts in your Next.js application.

Understanding the WordPress REST API Pagination

The WordPress REST API makes pagination straightforward by providing query parameters like per_page and page. These parameters help us control how many posts we fetch and which page we’re currently viewing.

Setting Up the API Request

First, let’s create a function to fetch paginated posts from WordPress. We’ll need to consider the total number of posts, posts per page, and the current page number. The WordPress REST API includes this information in the response headers.

Here’s how we can implement the basic pagination structure:

export async function getPaginatedPosts(page = 1, perPage = 10) {
  const response = await fetch(
    `${process.env.WORDPRESS_API_URL}/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?page=${page}&per_page=${perPage}`
  );

  const totalPages = response.headers.get('X-WP-TotalPages');
  const posts = await response.json();

  return {
    posts,
    totalPages: parseInt(totalPages),
  };
}

Implementing the Frontend

For the frontend, we’ll use Next.js’s built-in pagination capabilities along with the WordPress data. This creates a smooth, client-side navigation experience while maintaining SEO benefits.

Handling Edge Cases

Remember to handle scenarios like:

• Invalid page numbers
• Empty result sets
• Loading states
• Error boundaries

These considerations ensure a robust pagination implementation that can handle real-world usage scenarios.

Performance Optimization Tips

1. Implement page prefetching
2. Cache API responses
3. Use WordPress’s built-in REST API filters
4. Optimize image loading with Next.js Image component

Remember that WordPress pagination is zero-based internally but typically displayed as one-based to users. Always account for this difference in your implementation.