DATVault was designed to be flexible and it does not force you to organize your DATs in any specific way. DATVault works by detecting special JSON files in your DatRoot. Each DAT you would like to manage has its own corresponding JSON file. Each file provides info about the DAT version you currently have. This info is compared against the DATVault database to determine if there are updates available to download.

The DATVault JSON files contain the following keys:

• name: The name of the DAT which is displayed in the DATVault UI
• date: The date the DAT was was last updated on the DATVault server
• version: The version of the DAT which is displayed in the DATVault UI
• updateURL: The URL to this JSON file on the DATVault server. This is used to compare against your local file to know if your DAT is up-to-date or not.
• datURL: The download URL for the current DAT
• cueURL: The download URL for the current cue pack for the DAT if applicable
• datName: The file name of the current DAT

Example DATVault JSON for MAME:

{
   "name":"MAME - MAME ROMS (listxml)",
   "date":"11/10/2021 2:28:56 PM",
   "version":"V0.237",
   "updateURL":"http://www.datvault.com/public/MAME/info/MAME ROMS (listxml).json",
   "datURL":"http://www.datvault.com/public/MAME/dat/MAME V0.237 ROMS (listxml).zip",
   "cueURL":"",
   "datName":"MAME V0.237 ROMS (listxml).dat"
}