Sort YAML docs in file by key

[mamachanko]

I would like to sort the YAML documents in a file by a specified key.

yq deterministically sorts a single doc's keys which is nice, but not enough when you have a multi-doc file.

Let's say I have this input:

---
spec: { }
metadata:
  name: bob
---
metadata:
  name: alice
spec: { }

How could I achieve this desired output:

# sorted by .metadata.name and all fields within each doc
---
metadata:
  name: alice
spec: { }
---
metadata:
  name: bob
spec: { }

❤️ yq ❤️

[mikefarah]

You can combine the documents into a single array, sort, then split back out into separate docs again. Because we want to process all the documents together (rather than one at a time), well need to use eval-all/ea:

yq ea '[.] | sort_by(.name) | .[] | splitDoc' file.yml

[mamachanko]

Wonderful, @mikefarah ! Ty.