Intuitive Python

Serializing Python Objects with the pickle Module

Python only includes one standard library module named after a food, and that module is named pickle. The pickle module allows arbitrary Python objects to be serialized into a stream of bytes. This stream of bytes can then be unpickled by another Python program to restore the object that was originally pickled. Let’s explore this in a little more detail.

In the following example pickle is used to serialize and de-serialize a list containing strings and None:

pickle_example.py

import pickle

l = ["a", "b", None, "c"]

dumped_l = pickle.dumps(l)
print(dumped_l)

loaded_l = pickle.loads(dumped_l)
print(loaded_l)

If you run python3 pickle_example.py, you should see output like ...