A Django Paginator implementation that is stupid. It only knows whether it can navigate forward or back, not how many pages are available. Useful for object lists of an unknown length.

ignorant_paginator.py

from django.core.paginator import EmptyPage, InvalidPage, PageNotAnInteger, Page, Paginator

class IgnorantPage(Page):
    """The just-as-ignorant stepchild of IgnorantPaginator and Page."""
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ret = super(IgnorantPage, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        # Now, we need to know if we have a first and last dealio
        self.__has_next = (len(self.object_list) > self.paginator.per_page)
        self.object_list = self.object_list[:self.paginator.per_page]
        return ret
    
    def has_next(self):
        return self.__has_next
    
    def __repr__(self):
        return '<Page %s>' % self.number

class IgnorantPaginator(Paginator):
    """A Paginator implementation that is stupid. It only knows whether it can navigate
       forward or back, not how many pages are available. Useful for object lists of an
       unknown length (like when the objects are being fetched from a backend process 
       with no way of calculating the length ahead of time)."""
    ignoramus = True
    
    def __not_a_chance(self, *args, **kwargs):
        """Raises a NotImplementedError, in a very ignorant fashion."""
        raise NotImplementedError
    
    _get_num_pages = __not_a_chance
    num_pages = property(_get_num_pages)
    _get_count = __not_a_chance
    count = property(_get_count)
    
    def validate_number(self, number, default=None):
        try:
            try:
                number = int(number)
            except ValueError:
                raise PageNotAnInteger
            if number < 1:
                raise EmptyPage('That page number is less than 1')
            return number
        except InvalidPage:
            if default is not None:
                return self.validate_number(number=default)
            raise
    
    def page(self, number, default=None):
        assert (self.orphans == 0), 'I\'m too ignorant to deal with orphans'
        number = self.validate_number(number=number, default=default)
        bottom = ((number - 1) * self.per_page)
        top = (bottom + self.per_page + 1)
        # Get the results
        results = self.object_list[bottom:top]
        if not results:
            if number == 1 and self.allow_empty_first_page:
                pass
            else:
                raise EmptyPage('That page contains no results')
        return IgnorantPage(results, number, self)