yq

A lightweight and portable command-line YAML, JSON, INI and XML processor. yq uses jq (a popular JSON processor) like syntax but works with yaml files as well as json, kyaml, xml, ini, properties, csv and tsv. It doesn't yet support everything jq does - but it does support the most common operations and functions, and more is being added continuously.

yq is written in Go - so you can download a dependency free binary for your platform and you are good to go! If you prefer there are a variety of package managers that can be used as well as Docker and Podman, all listed below.

Quick Usage Guide

Basic Operations

Read a value:

yq '.a.b[0].c' file.yaml

Pipe from STDIN:

yq '.a.b[0].c' < file.yaml

Update a yaml file in place:

yq -i '.a.b[0].c = "cool"' file.yaml

Update using environment variables:

NAME=mike yq -i '.a.b[0].c = strenv(NAME)' file.yaml

Advanced Operations

Merge multiple files:

# merge two files
yq -n 'load("file1.yaml") * load("file2.yaml")'

# merge using globs (note: `ea` evaluates all files at once instead of in sequence)
yq ea '. as $item ireduce ({}; . * $item )' path/to/*.yml

Multiple updates to a yaml file:

yq -i '
  .a.b[0].c = "cool" |
  .x.y.z = "foobar" |
  .person.name = strenv(NAME)
' file.yaml

Find and update an item in an array:

# Note: requires input file - add your file at the end
yq -i '(.[] | select(.name == "foo") | .address) = "12 cat st"' data.yaml

Convert between formats:

# Convert JSON to YAML (pretty print)
yq -Poy sample.json

# Convert YAML to JSON
yq -o json file.yaml

# Convert XML to YAML
yq -o yaml file.xml

See recipes for more examples and the documentation for more information.

Take a look at the discussions for common questions, and cool ideas

Install

Download the latest binary

wget

Use wget to download pre-compiled binaries. Choose your platform and architecture:

For Linux (example):

# Set your platform variables (adjust as needed)
VERSION=v4.2.0
PLATFORM=linux_amd64

# Download compressed binary
wget https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/releases/download/${VERSION}/yq_${PLATFORM}.tar.gz -O - |\
  tar xz && sudo mv yq_${PLATFORM} /usr/local/bin/yq

# Or download plain binary
wget https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/releases/download/${VERSION}/yq_${PLATFORM} -O /usr/local/bin/yq &&\
    chmod +x /usr/local/bin/yq

Latest version (Linux AMD64):

wget https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/releases/latest/download/yq_linux_amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/yq &&\
    chmod +x /usr/local/bin/yq

Available platforms: linux_amd64, linux_arm64, linux_arm, linux_386, darwin_amd64, darwin_arm64, windows_amd64, windows_386, etc.

MacOS / Linux via Homebrew:

Using Homebrew

brew install yq

Linux via snap:

snap install yq

Snap notes

yq installs with strict confinement in snap, this means it doesn't have direct access to root files. To read root files you can:

sudo cat /etc/myfile | yq '.a.path'

And to write to a root file you can either use sponge:

sudo cat /etc/myfile | yq '.a.path = "value"' | sudo sponge /etc/myfile

or write to a temporary file:

sudo cat /etc/myfile | yq '.a.path = "value"' | sudo tee /etc/myfile.tmp
sudo mv /etc/myfile.tmp /etc/myfile
rm /etc/myfile.tmp

Run with Docker or Podman

One-time use:

# Docker - process files in current directory
docker run --rm -v "${PWD}":/workdir mikefarah/yq '.a.b[0].c' file.yaml

# Podman - same usage as Docker
podman run --rm -v "${PWD}":/workdir mikefarah/yq '.a.b[0].c' file.yaml

Security note: You can run yq in Docker with restricted privileges:

docker run --rm --security-opt=no-new-privileges --cap-drop all --network none \
  -v "${PWD}":/workdir mikefarah/yq '.a.b[0].c' file.yaml

Pipe data via STDIN:

You'll need to pass the -i --interactive flag to Docker/Podman:

# Process piped data
docker run -i --rm mikefarah/yq '.this.thing' < myfile.yml

# Same with Podman
podman run -i --rm mikefarah/yq '.this.thing' < myfile.yml

Run commands interactively:

docker run --rm -it -v "${PWD}":/workdir --entrypoint sh mikefarah/yq

podman run --rm -it -v "${PWD}":/workdir --entrypoint sh mikefarah/yq

It can be useful to have a bash function to avoid typing the whole docker command:

yq() {
  docker run --rm -i -v "${PWD}":/workdir mikefarah/yq "$@"
}

yq() {
  podman run --rm -i -v "${PWD}":/workdir mikefarah/yq "$@"
}

Running as root:

yq's container image no longer runs under root (https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/pull/860). If you'd like to install more things in the container image, or you're having permissions issues when attempting to read/write files you'll need to either:

docker run --user="root" -it --entrypoint sh mikefarah/yq

podman run --user="root" -it --entrypoint sh mikefarah/yq

Or, in your Dockerfile:

FROM mikefarah/yq

USER root
RUN apk add --no-cache bash
USER yq

Missing timezone data

By default, the alpine image yq uses does not include timezone data. If you'd like to use the tz operator, you'll need to include this data:

FROM mikefarah/yq

USER root
RUN apk add --no-cache tzdata
USER yq

Podman with SELinux

If you are using podman with SELinux, you will need to set the shared volume flag :z on the volume mount:

-v "${PWD}":/workdir:z

GitHub Action

  - name: Set foobar to cool
    uses: mikefarah/yq@master
    with:
      cmd: yq -i '.foo.bar = "cool"' 'config.yml'
  - name: Get an entry with a variable that might contain dots or spaces
    id: get_username
    uses: mikefarah/yq@master
    with:
      cmd: yq '.all.children.["${{ matrix.ip_address }}"].username' ops/inventories/production.yml
  - name: Reuse a variable obtained in another step
    run: echo ${{ steps.get_username.outputs.result }}

See https://mikefarah.gitbook.io/yq/usage/github-action for more.

Go Install:

go install github.com/mikefarah/yq/v4@latest

Community Supported Installation methods

As these are supported by the community :heart: - however, they may be out of date with the officially supported releases.

Please note that the Debian package (previously supported by @rmescandon) is no longer maintained. Please use an alternative installation method.

X-CMD

Checkout yq on x-cmd: https://x-cmd.com/mod/yq

• Instant Results: See the output of your yq filter in real-time.
• Error Handling: Encounter a syntax error? It will display the error message and the results of the closest valid filter

Thanks @edwinjhlee!

Nix

nix profile install nixpkgs#yq-go

See here

Webi

webi yq

See webi Supported by @adithyasunil26 (https://github.com/webinstall/webi-installers/tree/master/yq)

Arch Linux

pacman -S go-yq

Windows:

Using Chocolatey

choco install yq

Supported by @chillum (https://chocolatey.org/packages/yq)

Using scoop

scoop install main/yq

Using winget

winget install --id MikeFarah.yq

MacPorts:

Using MacPorts

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install yq

Supported by @herbygillot (https://ports.macports.org/maintainer/github/herbygillot)

Alpine Linux

Alpine Linux v3.20+ (and Edge):

apk add yq-go

Alpine Linux up to v3.19:

apk add yq

Supported by Tuan Hoang (https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=yq-go)

Flox:

Flox can be used to install yq on Linux, MacOS, and Windows through WSL.

flox install yq

MacOS / Linux via gah:

Using gah

gah install yq

Features

• Detailed documentation with many examples
• Written in portable go, so you can download a lovely dependency free binary
• Uses similar syntax as jq but works with YAML, INI, JSON and XML files
• Fully supports multi document yaml files
• Supports yaml front matter blocks (e.g. jekyll/assemble)
• Colorized yaml output
• Date/Time manipulation and formatting with TZ
• Deep data structures
• Sort keys
• Manipulate yaml comments, styling, tags and anchors and aliases.
• Update in place
• Complex expressions to select and update
• Keeps yaml formatting and comments when updating (though there are issues with whitespace)
• Decode/Encode base64 data
• Load content from other files
• Convert to/from json/ndjson
• Convert to/from xml
• Convert to/from hcl (terraform)
• Convert to/from toml
• Convert to/from properties
• Convert to/from csv/tsv
• General shell completion scripts (bash/zsh/fish/powershell)
• Reduce to merge multiple files or sum an array or other fancy things.
• Github Action to use in your automated pipeline (thanks @devorbitus)

Usage

Check out the documentation for more detailed and advanced usage.

``` Usage: yq [flags] yq [command]

Examples:

yq tries to auto-detect the file format based off the extension, and defaults to YAML if it's unknown (or piping through STDIN)

Use the '-p/--input-format' flag to specify a format type.

cat file.xml | yq -p xml

read the "stuff" node from "myfile.yml"

yq '.stuff' < myfile.yml

update myfile.yml in place

yq -i '.stuff = "foo"' myfile.yml

print contents of sample.json as idiomatic YAML

yq -P -oy sample.json

Available Commands: completion Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell eval (default) Apply the expression to each document in each yaml file in sequence eval-all Loads all yaml documents of all yaml files and runs expression once help Help about any command

Flags: -C, --colors force print with colors --csv-auto-parse parse CSV YAML/JSON values (default true) --csv-separator char CSV Separator character (default ,) --debug-node-info debug node info -e, --exit-status set exit status if there are no matches or null or false is returned --expression string forcibly set the expression argument. Useful when yq argument detection thinks your expression is a file. --from-file string Load expression from specified file. -f, --front-matter string (extract|process) first input as yaml front-matter. Extract will pull out the yaml content, process will run the expression against the yaml content, leaving the remaining data intact --header-preprocess Slurp any header comments and separators before processing expression. (default true) -h, --help help for yq -I, --indent int sets indent level for output (default 2) -i, --inplace update the file in place of first file given. -p, --input-format string [auto|a|yaml|y|json|j|kyaml|ky|props|p|csv|c|tsv|t|xml|x|base64|uri|toml|hcl|h|lua|l|ini|i] parse format for input. (default "auto") --lua-globals output keys as top-level global variables --lua-prefix string prefix (default "return ") --lua-suffix string suffix (default ";\n") --lua-unqu