maxrave-dev Reading a whole table in bounded pages
Within the paged family — the queries written to be read a page at a time — the data-access layer
exposes only (limit, offset) functions, so no call in that family can return an unbounded result
set. (The rest of the layer is not like this and does not pretend to be: plenty of queries take no
limit at all and read a whole table, and at least one takes a limit with the offset pinned at zero.
Those are not the ones this helper is for.) One generic helper turns any member of the paged family
into a full read, and every repository gets the same termination rule instead of writing its own:
// adapted — page size hoisted to a constant (the original repeats the literal three times), and
// the loop restructured for clarity: the source carries its state as a `Pair<Boolean, Int>`
// reassigned at the bottom of the body and has no `break`. Semantics identical.
private const val PAGE = 100
suspend fun <T> getFullDataFromDB(
func: suspend (limit: Int, offset: Int) -> List<T>,
): List<T> {
val all = mutableListOf<T>()
var offset = 0
while (true) {
val fetched = func(PAGE, offset)
all.addAll(fetched)
if (fetched.size < PAGE) break // short page == last page
offset += PAGE
}
return all
}
Call sites stay one line, and the paging never leaks into the repository:
// adapted: data-source name generalized; shape as written
override fun getLikedAlbums(): Flow<List<AlbumEntity>> =
flow { emit(getFullDataFromDB { limit, offset -> local.getLikedAlbums(limit, offset) }) }
.flowOn(Dispatchers.IO)
When this is the right call: an export or backup, a one-shot bulk mapping, a migration, or any
consumer that genuinely needs every row in memory at once. When it is a smell: the result is
immediately filtered, counted, sorted, or .take(n)'d — every one of those is a query you declined
to write, and the database would have done it without materializing the table. Feeding a scrolling
list is the loudest version: paging exists there precisely so that everything is not materialized.
Traps
The page size and the short-page test must be the same constant. Written out literally, the
loop contains the page size three times — once as the argument, once in the termination test, once
in the increment. Two that disagree fail in opposite directions and both fail quietly: a test
larger than the request stops after the first page and silently returns a truncated list; a test
smaller than the request never stops. The same thing happens without any edit if a query clamps its
own limit (LIMIT MIN(:limit, 50)) — the caller asks for 100, gets 50, and the helper calls it the
end of the table. One constant, and let the query take the limit it is given.
Nothing bounds the number of iterations. A query that ignores its offset — a hand-written statement where the parameter was left out, a view that re-sorts — returns a full page forever, and this loop accumulates into memory until the process dies. A ceiling costs one line and converts an unrecoverable hang into a log line you can act on.
Offset paging needs a total order, or pages overlap. LIMIT/OFFSET is only meaningful
relative to an ordering, and an ordering with ties is not total: rows that compare equal may land in
a different relative position on each query, so one gets returned twice and another never. Ordering
by a timestamp (ORDER BY favoriteAt DESC) is exactly the shape that has ties. Add the primary key
as a tiebreaker and the pages become a partition of the table.
Each page is its own transaction, so writes during the read shift every later offset. An insert
near the front pushes a row across the page boundary and you read it twice; a delete pulls one back
and you never see it. For an export from a quiet database this is theoretical; for a read racing
the user's own edits it is not. Wrap the whole loop in one transaction if the snapshot has to be
consistent, or page by a cursor on the ordering column (WHERE favoriteAt < :lastSeen) instead of
by offset — a cursor is immune to shifts and does not degrade.
Offset is not free, and it gets less free every page. The database produces and discards the first offset rows for each request, so reading M rows in pages of P costs on the order of M²/P row visits. The helper reads as "safely bounded", which is true of memory per query and false of total work: at the table size that motivated bounding it, this is close to the slowest way to read everything. Measure before assuming the loop is cheap.
The result is a list, not a flow, and the wrapper re-reads on every collection. The
flow { emit(getFullDataFromDB { … }) } shape means the whole table is read again each time
anything collects, including on a recomposition or a configuration change that re-subscribes. If
the caller collects more than once, either cache the result or hand back the database's own live
flow (see repository-flow-conventions for which shape belongs where).
Verifying it
The truncation failures all return a plausible-looking list, so compare it to the database's own answer rather than eyeballing it:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM album WHERE liked = 1;
Assert getFullDataFromDB { … }.size equals that count, on a table with more rows than one
page — a fixture of ten rows exercises exactly none of the paging logic and passes on a helper
that only ever runs one iteration. Add a fixture of exactly PAGE rows too: that is the boundary
where a full final page forces one extra, empty query, and a helper that stops on size <= PAGE
instead of < PAGE loses the last page there and nowhere else.
To find the hand-rolled copies this helper is meant to replace, quote the include glob or the shell
will expand it before grep sees it:
grep -rn 'offset += \|offset + 100\|size < 100' --include='*.kt' .