Query Cursors

Query cursors allow an application to retrieve a query's results in convenient batches, and are recommended over using integer offsets for pagination. See Queries for more information on structuring queries for your app.

Query cursors

Query cursors allow an application to retrieve a query's results in convenient batches without incurring the overhead of a query offset. After performing a retrieval operation, the application can obtain a cursor, which is an opaque base64-encoded string marking the index position of the last result retrieved. The application can save this string, for example in Datastore, in Memcache, in a Task Queue task payload, or embedded in a web page as an HTTP GET or POST parameter, and can then use the cursor as the starting point for a subsequent retrieval operation to obtain the next batch of results from the point where the previous retrieval ended. A retrieval can also specify an end cursor, to limit the extent of the result set returned.

Offsets versus cursors

Although Datastore supports integer offsets, you should avoid using them. Instead, use cursors. Using an offset only avoids returning the skipped entities to your application, but these entities are still retrieved internally. The skipped entities do affect the latency of the query, and your application is billed for the read operations required to retrieve them. Using cursors instead of offsets lets you avoid all these costs.

Query cursor example

In Go, an application obtains a cursor after retrieving query results by calling the Iterator value's Cursor method. To retrieve additional results from the point of the cursor, the application prepares a similar query with the same entity kind, filters, and sort orders, and passes the cursor to the query's Start method before performing the retrieval:

// Create a query for all Person entities.
q := datastore.NewQuery("Person")

// If the application stored a cursor during a previous request, use it.
item, err := memcache.Get(ctx, "person_cursor")
if err == nil {
	cursor, err := datastore.DecodeCursor(string(item.Value))
	if err == nil {
		q = q.Start(cursor)
	}
}

// Iterate over the results.
t := q.Run(ctx)
for {
	var p Person
	_, err := t.Next(&p)
	if err == datastore.Done {
		break
	}
	if err != nil {
		log.Errorf(ctx, "fetching next Person: %v", err)
		break
	}
	// Do something with the Person p
}

// Get updated cursor and store it for next time.
if cursor, err := t.Cursor(); err == nil {
	memcache.Set(ctx, &memcache.Item{
		Key:   "person_cursor",
		Value: []byte(cursor.String()),
	})
}

Limitations of cursors

Cursors are subject to the following limitations:

  • A cursor can be used only by the same application that performed the original query, and only to continue the same query. To use the cursor in a subsequent retrieval operation, you must reconstitute the original query exactly, including the same entity kind, ancestor filter, property filters, and sort orders. It is not possible to retrieve results using a cursor without setting up the same query from which it was originally generated.
  • Cursors don't always work as expected with a query that uses an inequality filter or a sort order on a property with multiple values. The de-duplication logic for such multiple-valued properties does not persist between retrievals, possibly causing the same result to be returned more than once.
  • New App Engine releases might change internal implementation details, invalidating cursors that depend on them. If an application attempts to use a cursor that is no longer valid, Datastore returns an error.

Cursors and data updates

The cursor's position is defined as the location in the result list after the last result returned. A cursor is not a relative position in the list (it's not an offset); it's a marker to which Datastore can jump when starting an index scan for results. If the results for a query change between uses of a cursor, the query notices only changes that occur in results after the cursor. If a new result appears before the cursor's position for the query, it will not be returned when the results after the cursor are fetched. Similarly, if an entity is no longer a result for a query but had appeared before the cursor, the results that appear after the cursor do not change. If the last result returned is removed from the result set, the cursor still knows how to locate the next result.

When retrieving query results, you can use both a start cursor and an end cursor to return a continuous group of results from Datastore. When using a start and end cursor to retrieve the results, you are not guaranteed that the size of the results will be the same as when you generated the cursors. Entities may be added or deleted from Datastore between the time the cursors are generated and when they are used in a query.

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