'Determines the proper starting offset of results to return.
It attempts to use the user-provided ``offset`` from the GET parameters,
if specified. Otherwise, it falls back to the object-level ``offset``.
Default is 0.'

def get_offset(self):

    offset = self.offset
    if (u'offset' in self.request_data):
        offset = self.request_data[u'offset']
    try:
        offset = int(offset)
    except ValueError:
        raise BadRequest((u"Invalid    offset    '%s'    provided.    Please    provide    an    integer." % offset))
    if (offset < 0):
        raise BadRequest((u"Invalid    offset    '%s'    provided.    Please    provide    a    positive    integer    >=    0." % offset))
    return offset
