# Directus\_files uses JSON for tags - moving to CSV?

**URL:** <https://community.directus.com/t/directus-files-uses-json-for-tags-moving-to-csv/1349>\
**Category:** Help\
**Tags:** data-modeling\
**Created:** [October 17, 2025, 8:12am UTC](https://community.directus.com/t/directus-files-uses-json-for-tags-moving-to-csv/1349 "2025-10-17T08:12:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![flipswitchingmonkey](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.directus.com/flipswitchingmonkey/32/374_2.png) [@flipswitchingmonkey](https://community.directus.com/u/flipswitchingmonkey)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2025, 8:12am UTC](https://community.directus.com/t/directus-files-uses-json-for-tags-moving-to-csv/1349/1 "2025-10-17T08:12:43Z")

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Currently `directus_files` appears to be using a JSON rather than a CSV array for the `tags` field. Since we can’t filter JSON, this kind of defeats the purpose I think. It’d be nice to just pull files based on their tags, but currently we can’t.

Have you considered moving from JSON tags to CSV tags?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![alexv-directus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.directus.com/alexv-directus/32/196_2.png) [@alexv-directus](https://community.directus.com/u/alexv-directus)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2025, 8:41am UTC](https://community.directus.com/t/directus-files-uses-json-for-tags-moving-to-csv/1349/2 "2025-10-17T08:41:32Z")

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You can create custom fields on Directus system tables. So in your use case, you can create a Tags table and then create a m2m between the directus\_files and your tags table.