withastro/astro · warning

No items found in ${fileName}

Error message

No items found in ${fileName}

What it means

The file() loader parsed your data file into a top-level array with zero entries, so the collection ends up empty. Astro logs this warning (plus a debug line with the item count) but does not fail: the store is cleared and no entries are stored. Parse failures are a different path ('Error reading data from').

Source

Thrown at packages/astro/src/content/loaders/file.ts:75

		filePath: string,
		{ logger, parseData, store, config, collection }: LoaderContext,
	) {
		let data: Array<Record<string, unknown>> | Record<string, Record<string, unknown>>;

		try {
			const contents = await fs.readFile(filePath, 'utf-8');
			data = await parse!(contents);
		} catch (error: any) {
			logger.error(`Error reading data from ${fileName}`);
			logger.debug(error.message);
			return;
		}

		const normalizedFilePath = posixRelative(fileURLToPath(config.root), filePath);

		if (Array.isArray(data)) {
			if (data.length === 0) {
				logger.warn(`No items found in ${fileName}`);
			}
			logger.debug(`Found ${data.length} item array in ${fileName}`);
			store.clear();
			const idList = new Set();
			for (const rawItem of data) {
				const id = (rawItem.id ?? rawItem.slug)?.toString();
				if (!id) {
					logger.error(`Item in ${fileName} is missing an id or slug field.`);
					continue;
				}
				if (idList.has(id)) {
					const message = DuplicateContentEntrySlugError.message(
						collection,
						id,
						fileName,
						fileName,
					);
					if (config.prerenderConflictBehavior === 'error') {

View on GitHub (pinned to 52e6c34790)

Solutions

1. Add at least one entry to the data file
2. If the collection is intentionally empty for now, ignore the warning
3. Remove the collection (or its file() loader) from the content config if it is no longer needed

Example fix

// before: src/data/authors.json
[]

// after
[
  { "id": "alice", "name": "Alice" }
]

// Lint content data files for empty arrays before build
import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs';
function dataFileHasItems(path: string): boolean {
  const parsed = JSON.parse(readFileSync(path, 'utf-8'));
  return Array.isArray(parsed)
    ? parsed.length > 0
    : Object.keys(parsed).some((k) => k !== '$schema');
}

When it happens

Trigger: A JSON/YAML/TOML file referenced by file() whose parsed top-level value is an empty array ([] in JSON, or an empty YAML sequence), so data.length === 0 after successful parsing.

Common situations: Placeholder data files committed before content exists; scaffolding templates that generate empty arrays; accidental truncation of a data file during merge or sync.

Related errors

• **${collection}** contains multiple entries with the same sl
• [content] Could not read the chunked data store at ${fileURL
• FileGlobNotSupported
• FileParserNotFound
• DuplicateContentEntrySlugError

AI-assisted analysis of withastro/astro@52e6c34790 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6e30a51019c54936. Report an issue: GitHub.