How to supply sidebar contents from external YAML file for page-specific sidebars

[fsaforo1]

Problem Statement

I'm trying to make my website more maintainable by storing sidebar contents in external programmatically-generated YAML files instead of directly in _quarto.yml. This works fine for a global sidebar, but I'm having trouble getting it to work with page-specific sidebars.

Issue

The sidebar panel appears, but it's empty - no content is displayed. If I hardcode the same structure directly in _quarto.yml instead of referencing the external file, it works correctly.

Question

What's the proper way to reference external YAML files for section-specific sidebar contents? The documentation isn't clear on this specific use case.

Below is an example of the structure of the external sidebar, sidebar_about.yml contents file:

- section: Organization
  contents: about/index.qmd
- section: People
  contents:
    - text: Team Member 1
      href: about/people/member1.qmd
    # more team members...

And in my _quarto.yml, I reference it like this:

website:
  navbar:
    pinned: true
    left:
      - text: About the Team
        href: about/index.qmd
    # other pages
  sidebar:
    - id: about
      title: "About the Team"
      style: docked
      background: dark
      contents: sidebar_about.yml
    # Other section sidebars defined here...

metadata-files:
  - sidebar_about.yml

I also include sidebar: about in the frontmatter of my about pages.

[mcanouil]

Be sure to read the documentation on sidebar: https://quarto.org/docs/websites/website-navigation.html#side-navigation

Then provide a small and simple fully reproducible example preferably as a Git repository.
Do not share your complex project.

[fsaforo1]

Here is a minimal reproducible example as requested - https://github.com/fsaforo1/quarto_sidebar_ext

[mcanouil]

Where did you see this?
Contents of sidebar does not take a file key so why would you expect it to work?

metadata-files include the file as if you copy/pasted them in _quarto.yml, meaning you are including the content of the file at the top level of the project YAML thus not at all at the right place.

Please read the documentation I have linked earlier to ensure you have a valid file or that your use of metadata-files will lead to a valid file.
If you use LLM, please double check that it's valid code and not made up code.

metadata-files:
  - sidebar.yml

means sidebar.yml is:

website:
  sidebar:
    - id: ...

[fsaforo1]

Thanks for the feedback. I updated the yml files taking cue from what including metadata-files actually means. It works now.