Depot is a structured data editor for Visual Studio Code that leverages Code's Custom Editor API to allow you to edit JSON data like a spreadsheet. Data you would normally store in raw JSON or XML can instead be stored, edited, and managed, all through a single Depot file.
Download as a Visual Studio Code Extension Here
If you use or find value in Depot, we'd love it if you could sponsor the project! Click the link below or navigate here to choose a tier to support this project at.
You can also manually create a Depot file by creating a file with this as its contents and giving it a .dpo
extension:
{
"sheets":[]
}
Note that once Depot is installed, the extension will try to open any file with .dpo
through the Depot editor. If you want to manually create a Depot file, I suggest creating the file as a .txt
file, adding the above contents, then changing the file's extension to .dpo
.
You can also use a custom file extension for Depot by editing your settings.json
file and adding the following line:
{
"workbench.editorAssociations": {
"*.foo" : "depot.data",
"*.bar" : "depot.data"
}
}
"workbench.editorAssociations": [
{
"viewType": "depot.data",
"filenamePattern": "*.foo"
},
{
"viewType": "depot.data",
"filenamePattern": "*.bar"
}
]
In the above example, clicking on a file with .foo
or .bar
would also open that file for editing in Depot.
depot.defaults.newFileName
allows you to set the default name for a new Depot file created through the Command Palette command.
Depot is meant as a way to allow people to edit data for their applications and programs in a manner that is common for data editing (spreadsheets) but also structured and indexable (JSON).
A Depot file is special because it contains not only its data, but also stores its data model inside itself. This means any given Depot file can be loaded and used anywhere, as the file itself contains the instructions for reading it. This also means the file can perform validation of itself at edit time, making sure that variables are within defined ranges or point to other valid sheets and lines.
Additionally, because Depot uses JSON with newlines, your data can be easily versioned through things like Git. Any changes to the data model or data itself will be reflected in the Depot file, with the same accuracy as normal source control.
Lastly, Depot could not exist without the work done by Nicholas Canasse on CastleDB. Depot is heavily inspired by CastleDB, but with the goal of bringing structed data editing to the IDE itself instead of needing to use another program. If you're familiar with CastleDB, you can read more about the similarites and differences between it and Depot here.
A Depot file (.dpo
) is just JSON, but unlike normal JSON it's organized through Sheets, Lines, and Columns.
Read more about sheets on the wiki here
At the highest level, a Depot file consists of some number of sheets. These sheets are invididual collections of structured data, with the added benefit that they can also reference each other.
A given sheet also has some number of lines. You can think of a sheet's lines as entries in the database defined by the sheet. Lines have data based on what columns are in the sheet it is a part of.
For a deeper dive on columns and their types, click here
Columns define the fields of a sheet that a line can have data for. Columns can be specific primitive types (string
, bool
, int
, etc.), but can also be other special types unique to Depot:
Type | Icon | Description | Storage Type | Default Value |
---|---|---|---|---|
GUID | None | A generated GUID for the given line. These cannot be edited. | String value | guid as string |
ID | None | The ID of a column. These are ideally unique, and Depot will warn you if you duplicate the value. | String value | index in sheet as string |
Text | A standard line of text. | String value | "" |
|
Long Text | Longer line of text. These fields can be resized in the editor. | String Value | "" |
|
Float | Any number | Number value | 0 |
|
Int | Integer number | Number value | 0 |
|
Bool | True / False boolean value. | true or false | true |
|
Image | Path to an image relative to the location of the Depot file (displayed in the sheet) | String relative path to the image | "" |
|
Single Select | Exclusive choice between a set number of choices | String value | "" |
|
Multi Select | Several choices between a set number of choices | Array of selected values as strings | `` | |
Line Reference | A reference to a line in a sheet in the current Depot file | String GUID of selected line | "" |
|
Sheet Reference | A reference to a sheet in the current Depot file | String GUID of selected sheet | "" |
|
List | An array of structured data | Array of structured values | [] |
|
File | Path to a file relative to the location of the Depot file (displayed in the sheet) | String relative path to the image | "" |
|
Properties | This is a top level JSON object that allows you to specify properties for lines and index them directly from a line instead of needing to use an array. | JSON Object | {} |
|
Grid | This is a top level Array object that allows you to specify an array of values and index them directly from a line instead of needing to use a list on entries. | Array | [true,true,true,true] |
For more in-depth documentation on Depot, you can read the wiki here.
Read the Changelog for older versions and minor releases
depot.openWithSchemaEditingOn
to settings to allow you to disable schema editing by defaultImage samples in the example folder are from game-icons.net under the CC BY 3.0 license