Is there an alternative to pickle - save a dictionary (python)

Question

I need to save a dictionary to a file, In the dictionary there are strings, integers, and dictionarys.

I did it by my own and it\'s not pretty and n

Answer 1

Presuming your dictionary contains only basic data types, the normal answer is json, it's a popular, well defined language for this kind of thing.

If your dictionary contains more complex data, you will have to manually serialise it at least part of the way.

Answer 2

JSON is not quite Python-way because of several reasons:

1. It can't wrap/unwrap all Python data types: there's no support for sets or tuples.
2. Not fast enough because it needs to deal with textual data and encodings.

Try to use sPickle instead.

Answer 3

Pickle is not safe when transfered by a untrusted 3rd party. Local files are just fine, and if something can replace files on your filesystem then you have a different problem.

That said, if your dictionary contains nothing but string keys and the values are nothing but Python lists, numbers, strings or other dictionaries, then use JSON, via the json module.