Cursor-based pagination with stable ordering

Offset pagination falls apart as soon as rows are inserted or deleted between page fetches—users see duplicates or missing items. Cursor pagination fixes that with stable ordering and ‘seek’ queries. I use a compound cursor that includes both the primary sort key (like created_at) and a tiebreaker (id) so ordering is deterministic. Another practical trick is making the cursor an opaque token (e.g. base64-encoded JSON) so clients don’t couple themselves to your internal identifiers. It’s not about security; it’s about keeping the API contract flexible. This approach has been rock solid for feeds and admin lists where data changes constantly.