Storing Python dictionaries

Minimal example, writing directly to a file:

import json
json.dump(data, open(filename, 'wb'))
data = json.load(open(filename))

or safely opening / closing:

import json
with open(filename, 'wb') as outfile:
    json.dump(data, outfile)
with open(filename) as infile:
    data = json.load(infile)

If you want to save it in a string instead of a file:

import json
json_str = json.dumps(data)
data = json.loads(json_str)

Also see the speeded-up package ujson:

import ujson

with open('data.json', 'wb') as fp:
    ujson.dump(data, fp)

Pickle save:

try:
    import cPickle as pickle
except ImportError:  # Python 3.x
    import pickle

with open('data.p', 'wb') as fp:
    pickle.dump(data, fp, protocol=pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)

See the pickle module documentation for additional information regarding the protocol argument.

Pickle load:

with open('data.p', 'rb') as fp:
    data = pickle.load(fp)

---

JSON save:

import json

with open('data.json', 'w') as fp:
    json.dump(data, fp)

Supply extra arguments, like sort_keys or indent, to get a pretty result. The argument sort_keys will sort the keys alphabetically and indent will indent your data structure with indent=N spaces.

json.dump(data, fp, sort_keys=True, indent=4)

JSON load:

with open('data.json', 'r') as fp:
    data = json.load(fp)