Protocol data types

This article defines the data types used in the Java Edition protocol. All data sent over the network (except for VarInt and VarLong) is big-endian, that is the bytes are sent from most significant byte to least significant byte. The majority of everyday computers are little-endian, therefore it may be necessary to change the endianness before sending data over the network.

Definitions

Name	Size (bytes)	Encodes	Notes
Boolean	1	Either false or true	True is encoded as 0x01, false as 0x00.
Byte	1	An integer between -128 and 127	Signed 8-bit integer, two's complement
Unsigned Byte	1	An integer between 0 and 255	Unsigned 8-bit integer
Short	2	An integer between -32768 and 32767	Signed 16-bit integer, two's complement
Unsigned Short	2	An integer between 0 and 65535	Unsigned 16-bit integer
Int	4	An integer between -2147483648 and 2147483647	Signed 32-bit integer, two's complement
Long	8	An integer between -9223372036854775808 and 9223372036854775807	Signed 64-bit integer, two's complement
Float	4	A single-precision 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point number
Double	8	A double-precision 64-bit IEEE 754 floating point number
String (n)	≥ 1 ≤ (n×3) + 3	A sequence of Unicode scalar values	UTF-8 string prefixed with its size in bytes as a VarInt. Maximum length of n characters, which varies by context. The encoding used on the wire is regular UTF-8, not Java's "slight modification". However, the length of the string for purposes of the length limit is its number of UTF-16 code units, that is, scalar values > U+FFFF are counted as two. Up to n × 3 bytes can be used to encode a UTF-8 string comprising n code units when converted to UTF-16, and both of those limits are checked. Maximum n value is 32767. The + 3 is due to the max size of a valid length VarInt.
Text Component	Varies	See Text formatting#Text components	Encoded as a NBT Tag, with the type of tag used depending on the case: As a String Tag: For components only containing text (no styling, no events etc.). As a Compound Tag: Every other case.
JSON Text Component	≥ 1 ≤ (262144×3) + 3	See Text formatting#Text components	The maximum permitted length when decoding is 262144, but the vanilla server since 1.20.3 refuses to encode longer than 32767. This may be a bug.
Identifier	≥ 1 ≤ (32767×3) + 3	See Identifier below	Encoded as a String with max length of 32767.
VarInt	≥ 1 ≤ 5	An integer between -2147483648 and 2147483647	Variable-length data encoding a two's complement signed 32-bit integer; more info in their section
VarLong	≥ 1 ≤ 10	An integer between -9223372036854775808 and 9223372036854775807	Variable-length data encoding a two's complement signed 64-bit integer; more info in their section
Entity Metadata	Varies	Miscellaneous information about an entity	See Minecraft Wiki:Projects/wiki.vg merge/Entity metadata#Entity Metadata Format
Slot	Varies	An item stack in an inventory or container	See Slot Data
NBT	Varies	Depends on context	See NBT
Position	8	An integer/block position: x (-33554432 to 33554431), z (-33554432 to 33554431), y (-2048 to 2047)	x as a 26-bit integer, followed by z as a 26-bit integer, followed by y as a 12-bit integer (all signed, two's complement). See also the section below.
Angle	1	A rotation angle in steps of 1/256 of a full turn	Whether or not this is signed does not matter, since the resulting angles are the same.
UUID	16	A UUID	Encoded as an unsigned 128-bit integer (or two unsigned 64-bit integers: the most significant 64 bits and then the least significant 64 bits)
BitSet	Varies	See #BitSet below	A length-prefixed bit set.
Fixed BitSet (n)	ceil(n / 8)	See #Fixed BitSet below	A bit set with a fixed length of n bits.
Optional X	0 or size of X	A field of type X, or nothing	Whether or not the field is present must be known from the context.
Prefixed Optional X	size of Boolean + (is present ? Size of X : 0)	A boolean and if present, a field of type X	The boolean is true if the field is present.
Array of X	length times size of X	Zero or more fields of type X	The length must be known from the context.
Prefixed Array of X	size of VarInt + size of X * length	See #Prefixed Array below	A length-prefixed array.
X Enum	size of X	A specific value from a given list	The list of possible values and how each is encoded as an X must be known from the context. An invalid value sent by either side will usually result in the client being disconnected with an error or even crashing.
Byte Array	Varies	Depends on context	This is just a sequence of zero or more bytes, its meaning should be explained somewhere else, e.g. in the packet description. The length must also be known from the context.
ID or X	size of VarInt + (size of X or 0)	See #ID or X below	Either a registry ID or an inline data definition of type X.
ID Set	Varies	See #ID Set below	Set of registry IDs specified either inline or as a reference to a tag.
Sound Event	Varies	See #Sound Event below	Parameters for a sound event.
Teleport Flags	4	See #Teleport Flags below	Bit field specifying how a teleportation is to be applied on each axis.
Recipe Display	Varies	See Recipes#Recipe Display structure	Description of a recipe for use for use by the client.
Slot Display	Varies	See Recipes#Slot Display structure	Description of a recipe ingredient slot for use for use by the client.
Chunk Data	Varies	See #Chunk Data below
Light Data	Varies	See #Light Data below

Identifier

Identifiers are a namespaced location, in the form of minecraft:thing. If the namespace is not provided, it defaults to minecraft (i.e. thing is minecraft:thing). Custom content should always be in its own namespace, not the default one. Both the namespace and value can use all lowercase alphanumeric characters (a-z and 0-9), dot (.), dash (-), and underscore (_). In addition, values can use slash (/). The naming convention is lower_case_with_underscores. More information. For ease of determining whether a namespace or value is valid, here are regular expressions for each:

• Namespace: [a-z0-9.-_]
• Value: [a-z0-9.-_/]

VarInt and VarLong

Variable-length format such that smaller numbers use fewer bytes. These are very similar to Protocol Buffer Varints: the 7 least significant bits are used to encode the value and the most significant bit indicates whether there's another byte after it for the next part of the number. The least significant group is written first, followed by each of the more significant groups; thus, VarInts are effectively little endian (however, groups are 7 bits, not 8).

VarInts are never longer than 5 bytes, and VarLongs are never longer than 10 bytes. Within these limits, unnecessarily long encodings (e.g. 81 00 to encode 1) are allowed.

Pseudocode to read and write VarInts and VarLongs:

private static final int SEGMENT_BITS = 0x7F;
private static final int CONTINUE_BIT = 0x80;

public int readVarInt() {
    int value = 0;
    int position = 0;
    byte currentByte;

    while (true) {
        currentByte = readByte();
        value |= (currentByte & SEGMENT_BITS) << position;

        if ((currentByte & CONTINUE_BIT) == 0) break;

        position += 7;

        if (position >= 32) throw new RuntimeException("VarInt is too big");
    }

    return value;
}

public long readVarLong() {
    long value = 0;
    int position = 0;
    byte currentByte;

    while (true) {
        currentByte = readByte();
        value |= (long) (currentByte & SEGMENT_BITS) << position;

        if ((currentByte & CONTINUE_BIT) == 0) break;

        position += 7;

        if (position >= 64) throw new RuntimeException("VarLong is too big");
    }

    return value;
}

public void writeVarInt(int value) {
    while (true) {
        if ((value & ~SEGMENT_BITS) == 0) {
            writeByte(value);
            return;
        }

        writeByte((value & SEGMENT_BITS) | CONTINUE_BIT);

        // Note: >>> means that the sign bit is shifted with the rest of the number rather than being left alone
        value >>>= 7;
    }
}

public void writeVarLong(long value) {
    while (true) {
        if ((value & ~((long) SEGMENT_BITS)) == 0) {
            writeByte(value);
            return;
        }

        writeByte((value & SEGMENT_BITS) | CONTINUE_BIT);

        // Note: >>> means that the sign bit is shifted with the rest of the number rather than being left alone
        value >>>= 7;
    }
}

Sample VarInts:

Value	Hex bytes	Decimal bytes
0	0x00	0
1	0x01	1
2	0x02	2
127	0x7f	127
128	0x80 0x01	128 1
255	0xff 0x01	255 1
25565	0xdd 0xc7 0x01	221 199 1
2097151	0xff 0xff 0x7f	255 255 127
2147483647	0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x07	255 255 255 255 7
-1	0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x0f	255 255 255 255 15
-2147483648	0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x08	128 128 128 128 8

Sample VarLongs:

Value	Hex bytes	Decimal bytes
0	0x00	0
1	0x01	1
2	0x02	2
127	0x7f	127
128	0x80 0x01	128 1
255	0xff 0x01	255 1
2147483647	0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x07	255 255 255 255 7
9223372036854775807	0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x7f	255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 127
-1	0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x01	255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 1
-2147483648	0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0xf8 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xff 0x01	128 128 128 128 248 255 255 255 255 1
-9223372036854775808	0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x80 0x01	128 128 128 128 128 128 128 128 128 1

Position

Note: What you are seeing here is the latest version of the Data types article, but the position type was different before 1.14.

64-bit value split into three signed integer parts:

• x: 26 MSBs
• z: 26 middle bits
• y: 12 LSBs

For example, a 64-bit position can be broken down as follows:

Example value (big endian): 01000110000001110110001100 10110000010101101101001000 001100111111

• The red value is the X coordinate, which is 18357644 in this example.
  
• The blue value is the Z coordinate, which is -20882616 in this example.
  
• The green value is the Y coordinate, which is 831 in this example.
  

Encoded as follows:

((x & 0x3FFFFFF) << 38) | ((z & 0x3FFFFFF) << 12) | (y & 0xFFF)

And decoded as:

val = read_long();
x = val >> 38;
y = val << 52 >> 52;
z = val << 26 >> 38;

Note: The above assumes that the right shift operator sign extends the value (this is called an arithmetic shift), so that the signedness of the coordinates is preserved. In many languages, this requires the integer type of val to be signed. In the absence of such an operator, the following may be useful:

if x >= 1 << 25 { x -= 1 << 26 }
if y >= 1 << 11 { y -= 1 << 12 }
if z >= 1 << 25 { z -= 1 << 26 }

Fixed-point numbers

Some fields may be stored as fixed-point numbers, where a certain number of bits represent the signed integer part (number to the left of the decimal point) and the rest represent the fractional part (to the right). Floating point numbers (float and double), in contrast, keep the number itself (mantissa) in one chunk, while the location of the decimal point (exponent) is stored beside it. Essentially, while fixed-point numbers have lower range than floating point numbers, their fractional precision is greater for higher values.

Prior to version 1.9 a fixed-point format with 5 fraction bits and 27 integer bits was used to send entity positions to the client. Some uses of fixed point remain in modern versions, but they differ from that format.

Most programming languages lack support for fractional integers directly, but you can represent them as integers. The following C or Java-like pseudocode converts a double to a fixed-point integer with n fraction bits:

 x_fixed = (int)(x_double * (1 << n));

And back again:

 x_double = (double)x_fixed / (1 << n);

Arrays

The types Array and Prefixed Array represent a collection of X in a specified order.

Array

Represents a list where the length is not encoded. The length must be known from the context. If the array is empty nothing will be encoded.

A String Array with the values ["Hello", "World!"] has the following data when encoded:

Field Name	Field Type	Value
First element	String	Hello
Second element	String	World!

Prefixed Array

Represents an array prefixed by its length. If the array is empty the length will still be encoded.

Field Name	Field Type
Length	VarInt
Data	Array of X

Bit sets

The types BitSet and Fixed BitSet represent packed lists of bits. The vanilla implementation uses Java's BitSet class.

BitSet

Bit sets of type BitSet are prefixed by their length in longs.

Field Name	Field Type	Meaning
Length	VarInt	Number of longs in the following array. May be 0 (if no bits are set).
Data	Array of Long	A packed representation of the bit set as created by BitSet.toLongArray.

The ith bit is set when (Data[i / 64] & (1 << (i % 64))) != 0, where i starts at 0.

Fixed BitSet

Bit sets of type Fixed BitSet (n) have a fixed length of n bits, encoded as ceil(n / 8) bytes. Note that this is different from BitSet, which uses longs.

Field Name	Field Type	Meaning
Data	Byte Array (n)	A packed representation of the bit set as created by BitSet.toByteArray, padded with zeroes at the end to fit the specified length.

The ith bit is set when (Data[i / 8] & (1 << (i % 8))) != 0, where i starts at 0. This encoding is not equivalent to the long array in BitSet.

Registry references

ID or X

Represents a data record of type X, either inline, or by reference to a registry implied by context.

Field Name	Field Type	Meaning
ID	VarInt	0 if value of type X is given inline; otherwise registry ID + 1.
Value	Optional X	Only present if ID is 0.

ID Set

Represents a set of IDs in a certain registry (implied by context), either directly (enumerated IDs) or indirectly (tag name).

Field Name	Field Type	Meaning
Type	VarInt	Value used to determine the data that follows. It can be either: 0 - Represents a named set of IDs defined by a tag. Anything else - Represents an ad-hoc set of IDs enumerated inline.
Tag Name	Optional Identifier	The registry tag defining the ID set. Only present if Type is 0.
IDs	Optional Array of VarInt	An array of registry IDs. Only present if Type is not 0. The size of the array is equal to Type - 1.

Registry data

These types are commonly used in conjuction with ID or X to specify custom data inline.

Sound Event

Describes a sound that can be played.

Name	Type	Description
Sound Name	Identifier
Has Fixed Range	Boolean	Whether this sound has a fixed range, as opposed to a variable volume based on distance.
Fixed Range	Optional Float	The maximum range of the sound. Only present if Has Fixed Range is true.

Teleport Flags

A bit field represented as an Int, specifying how a teleportation is to be applied on each axis.

In the lower 8 bits of the bit field, a set bit means the teleportation on the corresponding axis is relative, and an unset bit that it is absolute.

Hex Mask	Field
0x0001	Relative X
0x0002	Relative Y
0x0004	Relative Z
0x0008	Relative Yaw
0x0010	Relative Pitch
0x0020	Relative Velocity X
0x0040	Relative Velocity Y
0x0080	Relative Velocity Z
0x0100	Rotate velocity according to the change in rotation, before applying the velocity change in this packet. Combining this with absolute rotation works as expected—the difference in rotation is still used.

Chunk Data

Field Name		Field Type		Notes
Heightmaps		NBT		See Chunk Format#Heightmaps structure
Data		Prefixed Array of Byte		See Chunk Format#Data structure
Block Entities	Packed XZ	Prefixed Array	Unsigned Byte	The packed section coordinates are relative to the chunk they are in. Values 0-15 are valid. packed_xz = ((blockX & 15) << 4) | (blockZ & 15) // encode x = packed_xz >> 4, z = packed_xz & 15 // decode
	Y		Short	The height relative to the world
	Type		VarInt	The type of block entity
	Data		NBT	The block entity's data, without the X, Y, and Z values

Light Data

Field Name		Field Type		Notes
Sky Light Mask		BitSet		BitSet containing bits for each section in the world + 2. Each set bit indicates that the corresponding 16×16×16 chunk section has data in the Sky Light array below. The least significant bit is for blocks 16 blocks to 1 block below the min world height (one section below the world), while the most significant bit covers blocks 1 to 16 blocks above the max world height (one section above the world).
Block Light Mask		BitSet		BitSet containing bits for each section in the world + 2. Each set bit indicates that the corresponding 16×16×16 chunk section has data in the Block Light array below. The order of bits is the same as in Sky Light Mask.
Empty Sky Light Mask		BitSet		BitSet containing bits for each section in the world + 2. Each set bit indicates that the corresponding 16×16×16 chunk section has all zeros for its Sky Light data. The order of bits is the same as in Sky Light Mask.
Empty Block Light Mask		BitSet		BitSet containing bits for each section in the world + 2. Each set bit indicates that the corresponding 16×16×16 chunk section has all zeros for its Block Light data. The order of bits is the same as in Sky Light Mask.
Sky Light arrays	Sky Light array	Prefixed Array	Prefixed Array (2048) of Byte	The length of any inner array is always 2048; There is 1 array for each bit set to true in the sky light mask, starting with the lowest value. Half a byte per light value.
Block Light arrays	Block Light array	Prefixed Array	Prefixed Array (2048) of Byte	The length of any inner array is always 2048; There is 1 array for each bit set to true in the block light mask, starting with the lowest value. Half a byte per light value.