Convert a python dict to a string and back

Question

I am writing a program that stores data in a dictionary object, but this data needs to be saved at some point during the program execution and loaded back into the dictionar

Answer 1

Why not to use Python 3's inbuilt ast library's function literal_eval. It is better to use literal_eval instead of eval

import ast
str_of_dict = "{'key1': 'key1value', 'key2': 'key2value'}"
ast.literal_eval(str_of_dict)

will give output as actual Dictionary

{'key1': 'key1value', 'key2': 'key2value'}

And If you are asking to convert a Dictionary to a String then, How about using str() method of Python.

Suppose the dictionary is :

my_dict = {'key1': 'key1value', 'key2': 'key2value'}

And this will be done like this :

str(my_dict)

Will Print :

"{'key1': 'key1value', 'key2': 'key2value'}"

This is the easy as you like.

Answer 2

Convert dictionary into JSON (string)

import json 

mydict = { "name" : "Don", 
          "surname" : "Mandol", 
          "age" : 43} 

result = json.dumps(mydict)

print(result[0:20])

will get you:

{"name": "Don", "sur

Convert string into dictionary

back_to_mydict = json.loads(result) 

Answer 3

I use yaml for that if needs to be readable (neither JSON nor XML are that IMHO), or if reading is not necessary I use pickle.

Write

from pickle import dumps, loads
x = dict(a=1, b=2)
y = dict(c = x, z=3)
res = dumps(y)
open('/var/tmp/dump.txt', 'w').write(res)

Read back

from pickle import dumps, loads
rev = loads(open('/var/tmp/dump.txt').read())
print rev

Answer 4

The json module is a good solution here. It has the advantages over pickle that it only produces plain text output, and is cross-platform and cross-version.

import json
json.dumps(dict)