RFC: Pagination of data within Discord

[didinele]

Goal

Clear and concise generalistic APIs to paginate data within Discord. More specifically:

• select menu element, which can currently only hold 25 elements, this would have 2 strategies tied to it:
  1. [⬅️] [Select menu containing the options] [➡️] - buttons here become disabled depending on the current page (e.g. last page can't go right)
  2. [Single select menu] - if the page is 0, show 24 options and then page front. if page is pageCount - 1, show page back and 24 elements, otherwise show page back, 23 elements and page front

Current proposed API

Enum PaginationStrategy

• Buttons
• SelectMenuOptions

Interface SelectMenuPaginatorState

• readonly page: number, current page

Interface SelectMenuPaginatorData<Strategy extends PaginationStrategy> extends SelectMenuPaginatorState

• warning: pseudo-code ahead

• pageLeftButton?: Strategy extends PaginationStrategy.Buttons ? APIButton : undefined
• pageRightButton?: Strategy extends PaginationStrategy.Buttons ? APIButton : undefined
• selectMenu: APISelectMenu

Interface IStore - simple KV, Map-like storage

• keys will be the message ID the paginator is bound to
• values will be SelectMenuPaginatorState

• readonly size: number, some sort of getter of how many states are being kept
• get(key: string) -> MaybePromise<SelectMenuPaginatorState>
• setPage(key: string, state: number) -> MaybePromise<void>
• has(key: string) -> MaybePromise<boolean>
• delete(key: string) -> MaybePromise<boolean>, boolean value indicating if the value existed to begin with

Class SelectMenuPaginator<Strategy extends PaginationStrategy>, where

Constructor - new (options: SelectMenuPaginatorOptions) => SelectMenuPaginator, where SelectMenuPaginatorOptions would hold the following fields:

• data: unknown[] - the data one desires to paginate - this will leave on the class as an immutable property and cannot be changed for its lifetime
• key: string
• maxElementsPerPage?: number - defaults to 25, cannot be lower than 1, cannot be higher than 25
• store: IStore

Methods

• nextPage() -> Promise<SelectMenuPaginatorData>, should throw if we're at the last page
• previousPage() -> Promise<SelectMenuPaginatorData>, should throw if we're at the first page
• setPage(page: number) -> Promise<SelectMenuPaginatorData>, should throw if page is out of bounds
• getData() -> Promise<SelectMenuPaginatorData>, get current state without any mutations
• destroy() -> Promise<void> clean-up own state from this.store

Closing thoughts

This will become a library under the @chatsift namespace if it turns out well.