Colon in the front: YAML syntax

Question

I\'m currently using Sidekiq in a project and I have the following YAML config file:

:concurrency: 5
:pidfile: /tmp/pids/sidekiq.pid
:logfile: log/sidekiq.log
st         


        

Answer 1

It is actually not sidekiq specific. The colon in front of a key just makes this key a symbol instead of a string:

# example.yml
a:
  value: 1
:b:
  value: 2


yaml = YAML.load_file('example.yml')

yaml["a"] => { "value" => 1 }
yaml[:b] => { "value" => 1 }

So if your code accesses the config with key symbols, you should either add a colon in front of the key in the yaml file, or use some conversion of keys like #with_indifferent_access for the result hash (after parsing the yaml file)