<player>.dat files are used by Servers and Singleplayer Servers to store the state of individual players. The format is also used within level.dat files to store the state of the Singleplayer player, which overrides any <player>.dat files with the same name as the Singleplayer player. These files are in NBT format.
NBT structure
The root tag. In level.dat files, this tag is called "Player".
Dimension: The dimension the player is in. -1 is The Nether, 0 is The Overworld, 1 is The End. Other values are interpreted as 0.
playerGameType: The game mode of the player. 0 is Survival Mode, 1 is Creative Mode, and 2 is Adventure Mode.
SpawnX: See below.
SpawnY: May not exist. The coordinates of the player's bed. These tags are only removed if the player attempts to respawn with no valid bed to spawn at at these coordinates.
SpawnZ: See above.
Sleeping: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the player was in a bed when this tag was saved; has no effect on whether the player is in a bed when they log in.
SleepTimer: The number of ticks the player had been in bed when this tag was saved. No effect.
foodLevel: The value of the hunger bar; 20 is full. See Hunger.
EnderItems: If there are no items in the player's Ender chest, this is a list of Byte tags with size 0. If there are items, this is a list of Compound tags.
An item in the chest, includes the Slot tag. Slots are numbered 0 to 26.
mayfly: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the player can fly.
flying: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the player is currently flying.
invulnerable: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the player is immune to all damage and harmful effects except for void damage. (damage caused by the /kill command is void damage)
mayBuild: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the player can place and destroy blocks.
instabuild: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the player can instantly destroy blocks.
Item structure
Items are used both in the player's inventory and Ender inventory, and in chest tile entities, dropped item entities, furnace tile entities, brewing stand tile entities, and Villager trading recipes. Sometimes a Slot tag is used to specify the slot the item is in, such was with chests; other times there is no Slot tag, such as with dropped items.
The item's root tag. Some instances may give this tag a name, other times it is nameless because it is in a list.
Slot: May not exist. The inventory slot the item is in.
Damage: The data value for this item. The name "Damage" comes from when only tools used this value, now many other items use this value for other purposes.
Count: Number of items stacked in this inventory slot. Any item can be stacked, including tools, armor, and vehicles. Range is -128 to 127. Values below 2 are not displayed in-game.
color: The color of the item (used most commonly for leather armor). Color codes are calculated from the Red, Green and Blue components using this formula: Red<<16 + Green<<8 + Blue
Name: The name to display for an item.
Lore: List of strings to display as lore for the item.[1]
: A Line of text for the lore of an item.
CustomPotionEffects: Contains custom potion effects for potions. If this is not included, default is used. The color is defined by its data value