How to make a custom exception class with multiple init args pickleable

Question

Why does my custom Exception class below not serialize/unserialize correctly using the pickle module?

import pickle

class MyException(Exception):
    def __ini         


        

Answer 1

The current answers break down if you're using both arguments to construct an error message to pass to the parent Exception class. I believe the best way is to simply override the __reduce__ method in your exception. The __reduce__ method should return a two item tuple. The first item in the tuple is your class. The second item is a tuple containing the arguments to pass to your class's __init__ method.

import pickle

class MyException(Exception):
    def __init__(self, arg1, arg2):
        self.arg1 = arg1
        self.arg2 = arg2

        super(MyException, self).__init__('arg1: {}, arg2: {}'.format(arg1, arg2))

    def __reduce__(self):
        return (MyException, (self.arg1, self.arg2))


original = MyException('foo', 'bar')
print repr(original)
print original.arg1
print original.arg2

reconstituted = pickle.loads(pickle.dumps(original))
print repr(reconstituted)
print reconstituted.arg1
print reconstituted.arg2

More info about __reduce__ here.

Answer 2

I like Martijn's answer, but I think a better way is to pass all arguments to the Exception base class:

class MyException(Exception):
    def __init__(self, arg1, arg2):
        super(MyException, self).__init__(arg1, arg2)        
        self.arg1 = arg1
        self.arg2 = arg2

The base Exception class' __reduce__ method will include all the args. By not making all of the extra arguments optional, you can ensure that the exception is constructed correctly.

Answer 3

I simply do this

class MyCustomException(Exception):
    def __init__(self):
        self.value = 'Message about my error'

    def __str__(self):
        return repr(self.value)

... somewhere in code ...
raise MyCustomException

Answer 4

Make arg2 optional:

class MyException(Exception):
    def __init__(self, arg1, arg2=None):
        self.arg1 = arg1
        self.arg2 = arg2
        super(MyException, self).__init__(arg1)

The base Exception class defines a .__reduce__() method to make the extension (C-based) type picklable and that method only expects one argument (which is .args); see the BaseException_reduce() function in the C source.

The easiest work-around is making extra arguments optional. The __reduce__ method also includes any additional object attributes beyond .args and .message and your instances are recreated properly:

>>> e = MyException('foo', 'bar')
>>> e.__reduce__()
(<class '__main__.MyException'>, ('foo',), {'arg1': 'foo', 'arg2': 'bar'})
>>> pickle.loads(pickle.dumps(e))
MyException('foo',)
>>> e2 = pickle.loads(pickle.dumps(e))
>>> e2.arg1
'foo'
>>> e2.arg2
'bar'