---
title: Accessing Content
slug: experience/accessing-content
description: Data sources are the main way of the Purple Experience to fetch data. This data includes the content published for this app, publications, taxonomies, bookmarks, menus and more
docTags: 
createdAt: 2023-02-06T13:10:11.000Z
---

# Summary

Data sources are the main way of the Purple Experience to fetch data. This data includes the content published for this app, publications, taxonomies, bookmarks, menus, and more.

The amount of returned elements defaults to 24. You can adjust it by setting a `batchSize ` parameter on the data source. As the amount of loaded data is growing with the size configured in batchSize, we recommend keeping this number reasonably small. 

Additionally, other data sources for dropdowns, reading JSON files, etc., are available.

Data sources have three major use cases:

- Data sources for **lists**
- Data sources for the full **view**
- Data sources for **individual components** (e.g., issue)

The data source config always consists of a type. Optionally, a filter, sort criteria, and limits can be added to specify what and how many elements should be fetched.

On lists, more data sources automatically load the more you scroll to the end, until there is no more data available.

During the loading, the data source emits "ghosts" (an array of null), which can get rendered as a loading animation for some components.

Any content inside the Content Cloud is available through data sources.