11ty

Eleventy Documentation

Global Data Files

Your global data folder is controlled by the dir.data configuration option. All *.json and module.exports values from *.js files in this directory will be added into a global data object available to all templates.

Example

Consider a JSON data file located at _data/userList.json with the following content:

[
  "user1",
  "user2"
]

This data will be available to your templates under the userList key like this:

{
  userList: [
    "user1",
    "user2"
  ]
}

Folders

If a data file is in a folder, the folder name will inform your global data object structure. For example, in our previous example, consider if our userList.json file was moved into a users folder at _data/users/userList.json.

Our data will be now available to your templates under a users key like so:

{
  users: {
    userList: [
      "user1",
      "user2"
    ]
  }
}

Using JavaScript instead of JSON

Read more about using module.exports values in arbitrary JavaScript data files.

Sources of Data

The order of priority for sources of data is (from highest priority to lowest):

  1. Front Matter Data in a Template
  2. Front Matter Data in Layouts
  3. Template Data Files
  4. Directory Data Files (and ascending Parent Directories)
  5. Global Data Files ⬅

Related Docs