Read YAML file from Bash script

parse_yaml.sh

#!/bin/sh
parse_yaml() {
   local prefix=$2
   local s='[[:space:]]*' w='[a-zA-Z0-9_]*' fs=$(echo @|tr @ '\034')
   sed -ne "s|^\($s\)\($w\)$s:$s\"\(.*\)\"$s\$|\1$fs\2$fs\3|p" \
        -e "s|^\($s\)\($w\)$s:$s\(.*\)$s\$|\1$fs\2$fs\3|p"  $1 |
   awk -F$fs '{
      indent = length($1)/2;
      vname[indent] = $2;
      for (i in vname) {if (i > indent) {delete vname[i]}}
      if (length($3) > 0) {
         vn=""; for (i=0; i<indent; i++) {vn=(vn)(vname[i])("_")}
         printf("%s%s%s=\"%s\"\n", "'$prefix'",vn, $2, $3);
      }
   }'
}

test.sh

#!/bin/sh

# include parse_yaml function
. parse_yaml.sh

# read yaml file
eval $(parse_yaml zconfig.yml "config_")

# access yaml content
echo $config_development_database

zconfig.yml

development:
  adapter: mysql2
  encoding: utf8
  database: my_database
  username: root
  password:

Hi! What is the expected output from running test.sh? Perhaps listing an output file above would be useful.

Works great.

nice script!

Works really well, thank you!

description: sample message here
may overflow next line

I have a similar issue how could we store description variable that may overflow into the next line in the same

1_2_1_description="sample message here"
TO
1_2_1_description="sample message here may overflow next line"

Thank you!

I think python is superior in this scripting situation. why on earth anyone would use a bash script to do such a thing? python is generally pre-installed in mac and Linux.

python is so much clean and readable.

pip install pyyaml

---

import yaml

FILENAME = 'your_file.yml'

with open(FILENAME) as file:
    data:dict = yaml.full_load(file)

# data is a python dictionary

The traversal logic is super. Love it !! Sometimes its just fun to do these crazy stuff with Bash.

jq for JSON and yq for YAML
https://github.com/mikefarah/yq

Hi all! This is very interested thread. Anybody knows how to make it working where string spans several lines (through "|" pipe), example:

key1: |
   1st line
   2nd line
   3rd line
key2: |
   1st line
   2nd line
   3rd line

thanks for this.
added this to end after awk as a hack not to interpret $ interpolation (application: reading serverless.yml config into bash)

 | tr "$" "#" # don't want to interpret $

i cant figure out why its not running succesfully for me whenever i execute ./test.sh it gives me error
./test.sh
./test.sh: line 4: .: parse_yaml.sh: file not found
./test.sh: line 7: parse_yaml: command not found

has anybody else faced this issue please help

@Nigam8972 try with
. ./parse_yaml.sh
if they are in the same folder (it's what I use)

Cool, just discovered this; of course the more recent suggestions are more robust and feature-rich, but I found myself needing this on constrained (i.e. busybox, sh and no python) systems where going POSIX-sh only is the way to go.

The method here by @wadewegner (or similar) to pre-process problematic keys (but not their values) was the way to go, i.e. by using "advanced" sed hold-space etc.