Limit the number of results that a search source displays at one time to improve performance. End users can load more results as needed.

Before you begin

Role required: admin or sp_admin

About this task

If adding pagination to a simple search source, set Paginate results on the search source record to true. However, if adding pagination to an advanced search source, you must also modify the data fetch script to handle multiple pages of results. When a user loads more search results, the search source re-executes the data fetch script.
Note: If paginating a search source with advanced facets, do not modify the facet generation script to load facets based on the results from each page. Facets should enable end users to filter results from an entire result set, rather than page-specific results.

Procedure

  1. In the platform UI, navigate to Service Portal > Search Sources.
  2. Open a search source to add pagination to.
  3. From the Data Source tab, set Paginate results to true.
    Enabling this field adds a Load more results button to the search results page. This flag automatically enables pagination for simple search sources.
  4. (Optional) If the search source is advanced, modify the data fetch script to handle multiple search result pages.
    Update the data fetch script using one of the following GlideRecord APIs, depending on the scope of the search source.
    Scope Method
    Global setLocation() in GlideRecord - Global
    Scoped application chooseWindow() in GlideRecord - Scoped

    The following is an example data fetch script for a global search source that queries the incident table and paginates results.

    // queryLocation is a special value injected into the script,
// which holds the query_location property of the last item
// in the previously fetched result set
(function(query, queryLocation, count) {
	var results = [];
	var now_GR = new GlideRecord("incident");
	gr.addQuery("123TEXTQUERY321", query);
	gr.query();
	// Here, we are utilizing queryLocation to implement pagination.
	// In practice, there are many other ways to use the
	// query_location value of the last item in the previous
	// result set to implement pagination. Your implementation
	// will vary by use case.
	gr.setLocation(queryLocation - 1);

	var resultCount = 0;
	while(gr.next() && resultCount < count + 1) {
		results.push({
			label: gr.getDisplayValue(),
			short_description: gr.getValue("short_description"),
			// Here, we are populating the query_location
			// property of each result item. This is how the
			// framework knows what value to pass into the
			// next fetched search result script execution
			query_location: gr.getLocation(),
			primary: gr.getDisplayValue(),
			state: gr.getDisplayValue("state")
		});
		resultCount++;
	}

	if (results.length == 0)
		return results;

	if(results.length > count) {
		results.pop();
	} else {
		// In order to indicate that a result in the result
		// set is the final result (that there are
		// no more results to be fetched), add this property
		// to the final element in your result set.
		results[results.length - 1].isLastResult = true;
	}
	return results;
})(query, queryLocation, count, facets);

    For an additional example, see the Knowledge Base search source.

  5. Define the maximum number of results per query for the search source in the Search Page widget or Faceted Search widget instance options.

Result

The search page only returns the defined number of results at one time. When a user selects Load more results, the search source re-executes the query or data fetch script.

Paginated results