How to convert json to yaml and vice versa in command line?

Question

How convert JSON file into YAML and vice versa in command line?

Any ways are welcome.

Modica

Answer 1

Update: as of yq version 4.18:

The flags -p and -o let you specify input and output formats. You can convert between yaml, json, and xml!

yq -p json -o yaml file.json # json -> yaml
yq -p json -o xml file.json  # json -> xml
yq -p yaml -o json file.yaml # yaml -> json
yq -p yaml -o xml file.yaml  # yaml -> xml
yq -p xml -o json file.xml   # xml -> json
yq -p xml -o yaml file.xml   # xml -> yaml

With yq version 4.8.0:

yq e -P file.json yields YAML

yq e -j file.yaml yields JSON

• e or eval evaluates each file separately. ea or eval-all merges them first.
• -P or --prettyPrint outputs YAML
• -j or --tojson outputs JSON

Morez

When using -j to produce JSON, more recent versions (e.g. 4.27.5) report Flag --tojson has been deprecated, please use -o=json instead – Mara

--indent is a useful option to define the indent of the output – Daren

Answer 2

My python way:

1. create file yjconverter

#!/usr/bin/env python

import json,yaml,sys,os

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
  print('Usage:\n  '+os.path.basename(__file__)+' /path/file{.json|.yml}')
  sys.exit(0)

path = sys.argv[1]

if not os.path.isfile(path):
  print('Bad or non-existant file: '+path)
  sys.exit(1)

with open(path) as file:

  if path.lower().endswith('json'):
    print(yaml.dump(json.load(file), Dumper=yaml.CDumper))
  elif path.lower().endswith('yaml') or path.lower().endswith('yml'):
    print(json.dumps(yaml.load(file, Loader=yaml.SafeLoader), indent=2))
  else:
    print('Bad file extension. Must be yml or json')

2. add execution permissions and move file into bin:

chmod +x yjconverter
sudo mv yjconverter /usr/local/bin/

3. run yjconverter some_file.json or yjconverter some_file.yml

4. profit

Modica

Answer 3

Below code help to convert yml to json after installing yq

version 4.44.2

yq -o=json your_file.yml > your_file.json

Stipulation