YAML Format Reference

This page describes the YAML format used by dbtoyaml and yamltodb.

Top-level structure

schema <name>:
  owner: <username>
  description: <text>
  table <name>:
    ...

Schema properties

Property	Type	Description
owner	string	Schema owner
description	string	Schema comment

Table properties

Property	Type	Description
owner	string	Table owner
description	string	Table comment
columns	list	Column definitions (list of single-key maps)
primary_key	map	Primary key constraint
foreign_keys	map	Foreign key constraints
check_constraints	map	Check constraints
unique_constraints	map	Unique constraints

Column properties

Property	Type	Description
type	string	PostgreSQL data type
not_null	boolean	NOT NULL constraint
default	string	Default value expression
description	string	Column comment

Example

schema public:
  table film:
    owner: postgres
    columns:
      - id:
          type: integer
          not_null: true
      - title:
          type: character varying(32)
          not_null: true
      - release_year:
          type: integer
          not_null: true
      - length:
          type: smallint
      - rating:
          type: character(5)
    primary_key:
      film_pkey:
        columns:
          - id
    check_constraints:
      film_length_check:
        columns:
          - length
        expression: ((length > 0) AND (length < 10000))
      film_release_year_check:
        columns:
          - release_year
        expression: (release_year >= 1888)
  owner: pg_database_owner
  description: standard public schema

The columns value is a list of single-key maps (one entry per column), which matches the format produced by Pyrseas and is accepted by both yamltodb implementations. yamltodb also accepts the equivalent map form (columns: {id: {...}, ...}) for backward compatibility.