Inplace array merge causing duplicates instead of replace

[mssanjay]

Issue:
I am trying to merge(replace) array elements by key or name. This is causing duplicates instead of replace.
As explained below, my expection is that the YQ inplace merge should overwrite array elements by matching "service.[].name"

Version of yq: 4.13.2

Input Yaml
service1.yml:

_format_version: "1.1"
services:
  - name: service1
    url: https://service11.microservice.net
plugins:
  - name: prometheus

service2.yml:

_format_version: "1.1"
services:
  - name: service2
    url: https://service22.microservice.net
plugins:
  - name: prometheus

master.yml:

_format_version: "1.1"
services:
  - name: service1
    url: https://service1.microservice.net
  - name: service2
    url: https://service2.microservice.net
  - name: service3
    url: https://service3.microservice.net
  - name: service4
    url: https://service4.microservice.net    
plugins:
  - name: prometheus

Command
The command you ran:

yq eval-all '. as $item ireduce ({}; . *+ $item)' --inplace master.yml .\service1.yml .\service2.yml

Actual behavior

_format_version: "1.1"
services:
  - name: service1
    url: https://service1.microservice.net
  - name: service2
    url: https://service2.microservice.net
  - name: service3
    url: https://service3.microservice.net
  - name: service4
    url: https://service4.microservice.net
  - name: service1
    url: https://service11.microservice.net
  - name: service2
    url: https://service22.microservice.net
plugins:
  - name: prometheus
  - name: prometheus
  - name: prometheus

Expected behavior

_format_version: "1.1"
services:
  - name: service1
    url: https://service11.microservice.net
  - name: service2
    url: https://service22.microservice.net
  - name: service3
    url: https://service3.microservice.net
  - name: service4
    url: https://service4.microservice.net    
plugins:
  - name: prometheus

I like to overwrite array elements with service1.yml and service2.yml "services".

Thanks
Sanjay

[mikefarah]

What you're trying to do is a bit cleverer than a normal merge, as merge doesn't have anyway of knowing that 'name' is special key to match on.

There's an example here in the docs of how to do it, note that in the docs it uses 'a' as the matching key name where as you want 'name':

https://mikefarah.gitbook.io/yq/operators/multiply-merge#merge-arrays-of-objects-together-matching-on-a-key

[mssanjay]

I ended up first deleting all array elements by matching Key name and then using Append array elements. I was able to achieve my objective by writing this in a Bash script.

echo "Deleting $routerFile services from $masterFile "
# delete the services from master
for x in $(yq eval '.services[] | .name' $routerFile)
do
    echo "Deleting service from $masterFile - " + $x
    expr="del(.services[] | select(.name ==\"$x\"))"
    echo $expr
    yq eval "$expr" --inplace master.yaml
    if [ $? == 1 ]
    then
        echoerr "*** Delete from masterFile failed ***"
        exit 1
    fi
done

echo "Adding all services from $routerFile into $masterFile"
# append the services from router
yq eval-all '. as $item ireduce ({}; . *+ $item)' --inplace $masterFile $routerFile
if [ $? == 1 ]
then
    echoerr "*** yq merge to masterFile failed ***"
    exit 1
fi