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Parse the Link header for pagination

Extract next, prev, first and last page URLs from an RFC 8288 Link header like GitHub's API returns.

JavaScript
function parseLinkHeader(header) {
  const links = {};
  if (!header) return links;
  for (const part of header.split(/,\s*(?=<)/)) {
    const match = /^<([^>]+)>\s*;(.*)$/.exec(part.trim());
    if (!match) continue;
    const rel = /rel="?([^";]+)"?/.exec(match[2]);
    if (rel) links[rel[1]] = match[1];
  }
  return links;
}

Example / expected output

Output
parseLinkHeader('<https://api.x.io/items?page=2>; rel="next", <https://api.x.io/items?page=9>; rel="last"')
// { next: "https://api.x.io/items?page=2", last: "https://api.x.io/items?page=9" }

How it works

Many APIs (GitHub, GitLab, WordPress) return pagination links in a Link header instead of the body. Following the next URL is more robust than building page numbers yourself. This parser handles multiple comma-separated links and ignores malformed parts.

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