How can I use pickle to save a dict?

I have looked through the information that the Python docs give, but I'm still a little confused. Could somebody post sample code that would write a new file then use pickle to dump a dictionary into it?

Solution 1:

Try this:

import pickle

a = {'hello': 'world'}

with open('filename.pickle', 'wb') as handle:
    pickle.dump(a, handle, protocol=pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)

with open('filename.pickle', 'rb') as handle:
    b = pickle.load(handle)

print a == b

Solution 2:

import pickle

your_data = {'foo': 'bar'}

# Store data (serialize)
with open('filename.pickle', 'wb') as handle:
    pickle.dump(your_data, handle, protocol=pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)

# Load data (deserialize)
with open('filename.pickle', 'rb') as handle:
    unserialized_data = pickle.load(handle)

print(your_data == unserialized_data)

The advantage of HIGHEST_PROTOCOL is that files get smaller. This makes unpickling sometimes much faster.

Important notice: The maximum file size of pickle is about 2GB.

Alternative way

import mpu
your_data = {'foo': 'bar'}
mpu.io.write('filename.pickle', data)
unserialized_data = mpu.io.read('filename.pickle')

Alternative Formats

• CSV: Super simple format (read & write)
• JSON: Nice for writing human-readable data; VERY commonly used (read & write)
• YAML: YAML is a superset of JSON, but easier to read (read & write, comparison of JSON and YAML)
• pickle: A Python serialization format (read & write)
• MessagePack (Python package): More compact representation (read & write)
• HDF5 (Python package): Nice for matrices (read & write)
• XML: exists too *sigh* (read & write)

For your application, the following might be important:

• Support by other programming languages
• Reading / writing performance
• Compactness (file size)

See also: Comparison of data serialization formats

In case you are rather looking for a way to make configuration files, you might want to read my short article Configuration files in Python