mikefarah/yq · error

yaml node has no content

Error message

yaml node has no content

What it means

The YAML decoder in yq parses the raw YAML into a yaml.Node tree before converting it to yq's CandidateNode. This error is thrown in Decode() when the parsed document exists but its Content slice is empty — meaning the parser produced a node with no children and therefore no document value to yield. It signals that the input is not decodable into a meaningful document (e.g. an empty or null-only stream that the decoder cannot represent).

Source

Thrown at pkg/yqlib/decoder_yaml.go:161

	err := dec.decoder.Decode(&yamlNode)

	if errors.Is(err, io.EOF) && dec.leadingContent != "" && !dec.readAnything {
		// force returning an empty node with a comment.
		dec.readAnything = true
		return dec.blankNodeWithComment(), nil
	} else if errors.Is(err, io.EOF) && !dec.prefs.LeadingContentPreProcessing && !dec.readAnything {
		// didn't find any yaml,
		// check the tee buffer, maybe there were comments
		dec.readAnything = true
		dec.leadingContent = dec.bufferRead.String()
		if dec.leadingContent != "" {
			return dec.blankNodeWithComment(), nil
		}
		return nil, err
	} else if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	} else if len(yamlNode.Content) == 0 {
		return nil, errors.New("yaml node has no content")
	}

	candidateNode := CandidateNode{document: dec.documentIndex}
	// don't bother with the DocumentNode
	err = candidateNode.UnmarshalYAML(yamlNode.Content[0], dec.anchorMap)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	candidateNode.HeadComment = yamlNode.HeadComment + candidateNode.HeadComment
	candidateNode.FootComment = yamlNode.FootComment + candidateNode.FootComment

	if dec.leadingContent != "" {
		candidateNode.LeadingContent = dec.leadingContent
		dec.leadingContent = ""
	}
	dec.readAnything = true
	dec.documentIndex++

View on GitHub (pinned to 8b5af0694b)

Solutions

1. Check the input file/stdin is non-empty and contains a valid YAML document before decoding.
2. If empty input is expected/valid, guard before calling Decode (read the input, skip decoding when trimmed content is empty).
3. Update yq: handling of empty documents has changed between versions; use a version whose behaviour matches your expectation (returning a null document instead of erroring).

Example fix

// before
candidate, err := dec.Decode()
// after
if len(bytes.TrimSpace(rawInput)) == 0 {
    // treat as empty document instead of decoding
    return blankNode, nil
}

raw, err := os.ReadFile(path)
if err != nil { return err }
if len(bytes.TrimSpace(raw)) == 0 {
    // skip decode or use a default empty document
    return nil
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the YAML Decoder's Decode() (via `yq` with `-p yaml` input, or the yqlib API DecoderYaml.Init + Decode) on input that parses to an empty yaml.Node with len(Content)==0, e.g. an empty string input with the strict/empty-document handling in effect.

Common situations: Piping empty files or blank stdin into yq with an explicit YAML input parser; CI pipelines where a config file failed to generate and is empty; library users calling the yqlib decode API directly on empty buffers.

Related errors

• no support for input format
• orderedMap: invalid yaml node
• INI encoder supports only MappingNode at the root level, got
• configure YAML encoding: %w
• could not load %s

AI-assisted analysis of mikefarah/yq@8b5af0694b (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/76f42e30d5a7ddf2. Report an issue: GitHub.