Simple PHP Pagination script

This is a mix of HTML and code but it’s pretty basic, easy to understand and should be fairly simple to decouple to suit your needs I think.

try {

    // Find out how many items are in the table
    $total = $dbh->query('
        SELECT
            COUNT(*)
        FROM
            table
    ')->fetchColumn();

    // How many items to list per page
    $limit = 20;

    // How many pages will there be
    $pages = ceil($total / $limit);

    // What page are we currently on?
    $page = min($pages, filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'page', FILTER_VALIDATE_INT, array(
        'options' => array(
            'default'   => 1,
            'min_range' => 1,
        ),
    )));

    // Calculate the offset for the query
    $offset = ($page - 1)  * $limit;

    // Some information to display to the user
    $start = $offset + 1;
    $end = min(($offset + $limit), $total);

    // The "back" link
    $prevlink = ($page > 1) ? '<a href="?page=1" title="First page">&laquo;</a> <a href="?page=' . ($page - 1) . '" title="Previous page">&lsaquo;</a>' : '<span class="disabled">&laquo;</span> <span class="disabled">&lsaquo;</span>';