Page Through Results

Many of the calls that you make with the TSC library query for resources (like workbooks or data sources) on Tableau Server. Because the number of resources can be very large, Tableau Server only returns the first 100 resources by default. To get all of the resources, you need to page through the results.

• The Pager generator
  • Set pagination options
  • Use list comprehensions and generator expressions

The Pager generator

The simplest way to page through results is to use the Pager generator on any endpoint with a get function.

For example, to get all of the workbooks on Tableau Server, run the following code:

for wb in TSC.Pager(server.workbooks):
    print(wb.name)

The Pager generator function returns one resource for each time that it is called. To get all the resources on the server, you can make multiple calls to the Pager function. For example, you can use a for ... in loop to call the Pager function until there are no resources remaining. Note that the Pager generator only makes calls to the Tableau Server REST API when it runs out of resources–it does not make a call for each resource.

Tip: For more information on generators, see the Python wiki.

Set pagination options

You can set pagination options in a RequestOptions object and then pass it to the Pager function as a second optional parameter.

For example, to set the page size to 1000 use the following code:

request_options = TSC.RequestOptions(pagesize=1000)
all_workbooks = list(TSC.Pager(server.workbooks, request_options))

You can also set the page number where you want to start like so:

request_options = TSC.RequestOptions(pagenumber=5)
all_workbooks = list(TSC.Pager(server.workbooks, request_options))

Use list comprehensions and generator expressions

The Pager generator can also be used in list comprehensions or generator expressions for compactness and easy filtering. Generator expressions will use less memory than list comprehensions. The following example shows how to use the Pager generator with list comprehensions and generator expressions:

# List comprehension
[wb for wb in TSC.Pager(server.workbooks) if wb.name.startswith('a')]

# Generator expression
(wb for wb in TSC.Pager(server.workbooks) if wb.name.startswith('a'))

If you want to load all the resources returned by the Pager generator in memory (rather than one at a time), then you can insert the elements into a list:

all_workbooks = list(TSC.Pager(server.workbooks))