Data component format

Data components, or simply components, are structured data used to store information and define behavior. Their IDs are namespaced identifiers, and their values can be any data type – see § List of components.

When used by items, they are referred as item components or item stack components. They can exist anywhere that an item is stored, such as the player's inventory, container block entities, and structure files. Importantly, not all characteristics of items are covered by data components, and remain as fixed properties associated with the item ID; the behaviour cannot be removed from the item, nor applied to a different item that does not have that behaviour by default. For a reasonably comprehensive list of such properties associated with items in the latest version, see Java Edition hardcoded item properties.

Data components are only partly implemented for block entities. They partially replace the NBT format and allow some block data to be read or copied through predicates and loot functions.