Why does StrictYAML only parse from strings and not files?
While other parsers will take strings, file handles and file names, StrictYAML will only parse YAML strings.
This is done deliberately to reduce the module's remit, with the intention of reducing both the potential bug surface and the number of exceptions that StrictYAML has to deal with - things like nonexistent files, file system errors, bad reads, unknown file extensions, etc. become the problem of some other module - ideally one more focused on handling those kinds of issues.
If you want a quick and easy one liner way to get text from a file, I recommend that you pip install path.py and and use .text() on the Path object:
>>> from path import Path
>>> from strictyaml import load
>>> parsed_data = load(Path("myfile.yaml").text()).data
>>> print(parsed_data)
[ parsed yaml ]