Add a record/array element and then insert yaml file as key of that record

[dkebler]

I have a yaml array kinda like so

y1.yaml

history:
   - id: 20240928082901
     desc: first history
     details:
        date: somedate
        cid: 45321

I have another file like so

y2.yaml

date: anotherdate
cid: 96566

What I need to do is create a new "record" (i.e. array element) in y1.yaml from a bash heredoc (below) and then add y2.yaml under a new details: key of that new record/element saving it all back to y1.yaml.

<some command> << EOF 
id: $(date '+%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
desc: $DESC 
EOF

so result would look like this.

y1.yaml

history:
   -  id: 20240928082901
      desc: first history
      details:
           date: somedate
           cid: 45321
    - id: 20240929112923
      desc: second history
      details:
           date: anotherdate
           cid: 96566

I saw a lot of hard coded examples of insert (including docs) but nothing that uses another yaml file or a string of yaml (as a heredoc).

When using sed I single quote out and in anything I want bash to subs/eval in the sed 'command' so maybe something like that except yq expects json there not yaml.

maybe kinda like this??? yq e '<prejson>' $(yq -o=json '.' y2.yml)' <closing json> * .' y1.yml

#1688
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61109518/how-to-insert-or-add-a-field-in-a-yaml-after-a-specific-key-in-yq
#821

Little Help/ Suggestions? Thx

[mikefarah]

I would probably just use env variables for the bash bit; and then use the load operator to embed another yaml file in:

id=$(date '+%Y%m%d%H%M%S') desc="hey" yq '.history += {"id": env(id), "desc": env(desc), "details": load("f2.yaml")}' f1.yaml

Explanation:

• env(id) will read in the id environment variable, and similarly for desc
• load('f2.yaml') will read in the other file into the current context

Use -i if you want to save the changes to f1.yaml in place.

[dkebler]

Thanks for replying to my lonely post. I'll give that a try and report back