Load

The load/strload operator allows you to load in content from another file referenced in your yaml document.

Note that you can use string operators like + and sub to modify the value in the yaml file to a path that exists in your system.

Use strload to load text based content as a string block, and load to interpret the file as yaml.

Lets say there is a file ../../examples/thing.yml:

a: apple is included
b: cool

{% hint style="warning" %} Note that versions prior to 4.18 require the 'eval/e' command to be specified.

yq e <exp> <file> {% endhint %}

Simple example

Given a sample.yml file of:

myFile: ../../examples/thing.yml

then

yq 'load(.myFile)' sample.yml

will output

a: apple is included
b: cool.

Note that you can modify the filename in the load operator if needed.

Given a sample.yml file of:

something:
  file: thing.yml

then

yq '.something |= load("../../examples/" + .file)' sample.yml

will output

something:
  a: apple is included
  b: cool.

Recursively match all the nodes (..) and then filter the ones that have a 'file' attribute.

Given a sample.yml file of:

something:
  file: thing.yml
over:
  here:
    - file: thing.yml

then

yq '(.. | select(has("file"))) |= load("../../examples/" + .file)' sample.yml

will output

something:
  a: apple is included
  b: cool.
over:
  here:
    - a: apple is included
      b: cool.

This will work for any text based file

Given a sample.yml file of:

something:
  file: thing.yml

then

yq '.something |= strload("../../examples/" + .file)' sample.yml

will output

something: |-
  a: apple is included
  b: cool.