DataLens

Overview

DataLens is a Paper plugin that gives server operators and developers a powerful lens into the internal data structures of Minecraft objects. Point at any block, entity or player, and instantly explore its full data tree — PDC tags, attributes, potion effects, enchantments, block states and more — through both a paginated chest GUI and chat commands.

Unlike simple NBT viewers, DataLens provides a complete inspect → edit → validate → diff → export pipeline with automatic rollback on failure, a built-in changelog, and a public API for third-party schema registration.

Supported platforms: Bukkit / Spigot / Paper 1.20.x – 1.21.x · Java 21+

Features

🔎 Deep Inspection

• Blocks, Entities, Items & Players — inspect any object via raytrace targeting or by player name.
• Full data tree extraction — PDC keys, block states, entity attributes, potion effects, equipment, enchantments, lore, and more are captured into a hierarchical DataNode tree.
• Version-adaptive — pluggable adapter layer auto-detects the server version and loads the appropriate reader/writer.

✏️ Safe In-Place Editing

• Set / Remove any primitive value by dot-notation path (e.g. pdc.myplugin:level).
• Type validation & coercion — raw string inputs are validated against the target node's DataType before committing.
• Atomic rollback — a deep-copy snapshot is taken before every write; if persistence fails the tree is restored automatically.

📊 Diff Engine

• Compare the live data tree against your working copy to see exactly what changed — additions, removals and modifications are displayed with color-coded chat output.

📤 Export

• Dump the complete data tree as JSON or YAML directly to chat.

🖥️ Inspector GUI

• 54-slot paginated inventory with navigation breadcrumbs.
• Click into compound/list nodes to drill down; use Back to navigate up.
• Color-coded type indicators, pagination controls, and one-click export.

📝 Changelog

• Every SET and REMOVE operation is logged to plugins/DataLens/changelog.log with timestamps, actor, path, and old/new values.
• Configurable — can be disabled entirely.

🔐 Permission System

• Granular permission nodes (datalens.inspect, datalens.edit, datalens.admin).

🧩 Public API

• Third-party plugins can register schemas for their PDC namespaces to improve labelling and validation.
• Programmatic access to InspectorService and SessionService via DataLensPlugin.getAPI().

⚡ Performance

• Per-player sessions backed by a Caffeine LRU cache with configurable TTL and capacity.
• Read operations are thread-safe; writes enforce main-thread execution.

Commands

Both commands include context-aware tab completion — paths are autocompleted from the live data tree, and values suggest type-appropriate options.

Permissions

Configuration

Configuration is stored in plugins/DataLens/config.yml:

debug: false

cache:
  session-ttl-seconds: 60     # Idle timeout for player sessions
  max-sessions: 100            # Maximum concurrent inspection sessions

inspect:
  max-ray-distance: 5.0        # Raytrace distance in blocks for /inspect

changelog:
  enabled: true                # Enable/disable edit logging
  max-entries: 10000           # Maximum changelog entries

📚 Documentation and support

All documentation, source code, and examples are available in the official repository:
👉 https://github.com/Parallax-Development/DataLens