Can we do variable substitution on YAML files in IntelliJ? - intellij-idea

Question

I am using IntelliJ to develop Java applications which uses YAML files for the app properties. These YAML files have some placeholder/template params like:
credentials:
clientId: ${client.id}
secretKey: ${secret.key}
My CI/CD pipeline takes care of substituting the actual value for these params (client.id and secret.key) based on the environment on which it is getting deployed.
I'm looking for something similar in IntelliJ. Something like, I configure some static/fixed values for the params (Ex: client.id and secret.key) within the IDE and when I run locally using the IDE, these values should be substituted onto these YAML files and run.
This will actually save me from updating the YAML files with the placeholder params each time I check in some other changes to my version control system.

Answer 1

There is no such feature in IDEA, because IDEA cannot auto detect every possible known or unknown expression language or template macros that you could use in a yaml file. Furthermore, IDEA must create a context for that or these template files.
For IDEA it's just a normal yaml file.
IDEA has a language injection feature.
That can be used to inject sql into a java string for instance or inject any language into a yaml field.
This is a really nice feature and can help you to rename sql column names aso. but this won't solve your special problem, because you want to make that template "runnable" within in certain context where you define your variables.
My suggestion would be, to write a small simple program that makes nearly the same as the template engine does.
When you only need simple string replacements and no macro execution then this could be done via regular expression.
If it's more complicated I would use the same template engine as the "real processor" does.
If you want further help, it would be good to know how your yaml processing pipeline looks like.