Data in Davia

Understand Davia’s global, persistent data and how pages connect in your workspace.

Your workspace has a global data layer

In Davia, each piece of data lives globally in your workspace. Any interactive component (and by extension, any page) can read and update that data. Your workspace has a set of shared, named databases you can plug components into.

This paradigm makes your documents connected by design. Build something in one place, and use the same data in another — with no manual syncing.

When you ask Davia to generate a new component, it often also scaffolds the data it needs and automatically connects the component to that database. This means your component is usable right away — no manual setup or wiring required.

Where data lives

All data files are stored in .davia/assets/data/ as JSON files. They can be organized in nested folders.

.davia/assets/
├── data/
│   ├── users.json
│   ├── config.json
│   └── analytics/
│       └── sales.json

JSON structure

Data files must be valid JSON. For most use cases, top-level arrays are preferred — similar to database tables.

[
  { "id": 1, "name": "Alice", "role": "Admin" },
  { "id": 2, "name": "Bob", "role": "User" }
]

Avoid deeply nested structures. Keep properties flat and primitive whenever possible — this makes data easier to display and edit.

Two ways to display data

1. Database Views (for tabular data)

Embed JSON directly in an HTML page as an interactive table:

<database-view data-path="data/users.json"></database-view>

Database views only work when the JSON root is a top-level array. Each array item becomes a row in the table.

2. MDX Components (for custom UIs)

For charts, forms, or custom layouts, use an MDX component that imports and binds to the data:

import users from "~/data/users.json";

export function UserList() {
  const { data, updateData } = useData(users);
  return (
    <ul>
      {data.map(user => <li key={user.id}>{user.name}</li>)}
    </ul>
  );


}

Data is shared, not scoped

The same JSON file can be imported by multiple components across different pages. When one component updates the data, all components using that file see the change.

To share data between pages, simply import the same JSON file path in each component. No extra wiring required.