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Add note on not using floats with CursorPagination #5459

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Sep 27, 2017
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Add note on not using floats with CursorPagination #5459

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5 changes: 5 additions & 0 deletions docs/api-guide/pagination.md
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Expand Up @@ -179,6 +179,10 @@ Proper usage of cursor pagination should have an ordering field that satisfies t
* Should be an unchanging value, such as a timestamp, slug, or other field that is only set once, on creation.
* Should be unique, or nearly unique. Millisecond precision timestamps are a good example. This implementation of cursor pagination uses a smart "position plus offset" style that allows it to properly support not-strictly-unique values as the ordering.
* Should be a non-nullable value that can be coerced to a string.
* Should not be a float. Precision errors easily lead to incorrect results.
Hint: use decimals instead.
(If you already have a float field and must paginate on that, an
[example `CursorPagination` subclass that uses decimals to limit precision is available here][float_cursor_pagination_example].)
* The field should have a database index.

Using an ordering field that does not satisfy these constraints will generally still work, but you'll be losing some of the benefits of cursor pagination.
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -317,3 +321,4 @@ The [`django-rest-framework-link-header-pagination` package][drf-link-header-pag
[drf-proxy-pagination]: https://github.com/tuffnatty/drf-proxy-pagination
[drf-link-header-pagination]: https://github.com/tbeadle/django-rest-framework-link-header-pagination
[disqus-cursor-api]: http://cramer.io/2011/03/08/building-cursors-for-the-disqus-api
[float_cursor_pagination_example]: https://gist.github.com/keturn/8bc88525a183fd41c73ffb729b8865be#file-fpcursorpagination-py