How to use nextLink property in azure pagination in /providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines REST API

Question

I am calling azure /providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines REST API. I need to implement pagination for this API. As per Azure docs Use the nextLink property in the response to get the next page of virtual machines. nextLink property is The URI to fetch the next page of VMs. Call ListNext() with this URI to fetch the next page of Virtual Machines. I am not using Azure SDK for making azure REST calls. Do I need to set the authentication header for this URI? How the URI will look like?

Answer 1

nextLink property is a URL that you receive if the server sends a partial response for your request.

For example, let's say you have 100 VMs in your Azure Subscription and when you try to list the VMs, the response only contains information about 50 VMs. Along with that response, you will get nextLink property using which you can fetch next 50 VMs.

It looks almost identical to your original request URL but it will have a $skiptoken query string parameter.

For example, if your original request URL looks something like:

https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines?api-version=2021-03-01

then your nextLink would look something like:

https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines?api-version=2021-03-01&$skiptoken=<somevalue>.

You would still need to add authorization header to your request.

Please note that $skiptoken is an opaque value and you should not try to infer its meaning or define any business rules on its value. If you get nextLink in the response, then it would simply mean there's more data available on the server.