Paginating with a workspace variable

APIs return one page at a time. To get the next page you need a cursor that says where the last page ended. A for loop can't carry that cursor between runs, and looping through everything in one go hits the 300-second timeout.

The fix: do one page per run, save the cursor in a workspace variable, and have the workflow re-trigger itself until there are no pages left.

Setup

Create a workspace variable called cursor (Variables & secrets), type number, value 0. Reference it as {{ WORKSPACE_VARIABLES.cursor }} in the workflows.

The workflow

1. Trigger - Choose the default trigger available when you open a new workflow. Copy the curl command as we will be using it to re-fire itself for each page.

1. Input - wire the trigger in.

2. Read cursor (Code) - get the cursor, fetch one page, output the next cursor and whether more pages exist. Bind body_cursor → {{ input.body.cursor }} and var_cursor → {{ WORKSPACE_VARIABLES.cursor }}.

3.    def main(WORKFLOW_CONTEXT):
          raw = WORKFLOW_CONTEXT.get("cursor", "")
          cursor = int(raw) if str(raw).strip() not in ("", "None") else 0
   
          items = list(range(1, 13))   # replace with your real source
          page_size = 5
          page = items[cursor:cursor + page_size]
   
          return {
              "page": page,
              "next_cursor": cursor + page_size,
              "has_more": (cursor + page_size) < len(items),
          }

   
4. For loop over {{ read_cursor.page }} — your per-record work. This loops through each index for the page and you can check each run in the child iterations of the execution logs

   

   
5. Update Workspace Variable - set cursor to {{ read_cursor.next_cursor }}. This advances the saved cursor so the next run reads the new value.

   

   
6. If/Else on {{ read_cursor.has_more }} == true:

   • true → HTTP Request, POST to the trigger's webhook CURL and parse it

   

   • false → Update Workspace Variable set cursor back to 0, then stop.

Swap in a real source

Replace the stand-in list in step 3. Only the cursor and the "more pages" check change:

Source	next cursor	more pages?
GraphQL (Shopify)	endCursor	hasNextPage
Cursor REST (HubSpot)	paging.next.after	paging.next exists
Database	last row's id	full page returned

Watch out for

• Use the Update Workspace Variable node, not "Update Workflow Variable." They look identical but write to different stores; mixing them up means your cursor never actually moves and the workflow loops forever on the same page.

• Timeout: keep the page size small so each run finishes well under 300 seconds.