The trick is to convert the object into an array, apply the selection to the array elements and then convert it back into an object. The filter with_entries does these conversions under the hood. It is a shorthand for to_entries | map(foo) | from_entries (see jq manual).

The call is slightly different depending on the yq implementation used: yq - Python or yq - Go. The bash script contains calls for both implementations.

#!/bin/bash

INPUT='
{
  "entries": {
    "entry1": {
      "enabled": true
    },
    "entry2": {
      "enabled": false
    },
    "entry3": {
      "dummy": "TEST"
    }
  }
}
'

echo "yq - Go implementation"       # https://mikefarah.gitbook.io/yq/
yq -j e '.entries | with_entries(select(.value.enabled == true))' - <<< "$INPUT"

echo "yq - Python implementation"   # https://github.com/kislyuk/yq
yq '.entries | with_entries(select(.value.enabled == true))' <<< "$INPUT"

output

{
  "entry1": {
    "enabled": true
  }
}

First example:

yq '.[] | select(.[] == "c")' examples/data1.yaml

Explanation:

• expand the top level entries .[]
• select the ones that have a (direct) child == "foo": select(.[] == "c")

second example:

yq '.[] | select(.. == "foo")' examples/data1.yaml

Explanation:

• expand the top level entries .[]
• select the ones that have a any child == "foo": select(.. == "c") (recursively checks the tree)

Not sure which output is desired - this is outputting the child values of the nodes. You could pipe it through 'key' to get the key node...

quick look at this and it looks like it's a bug. Can't work out what's going on - need to investigate further.

As a work around this works:

select(.a == "hello"), select(.b == "world")