Serizalize an array in Python

Question

I ́m trying to serialize an array in python to insert it on a database of MySQL... I try with pickle.dump() method but it returns byte... what can I use?? thanks!!

(I ́m working in python 3)

• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: You can use database normalization.
• tiagoboldt: Python 3 is not yet supported for daily development and it is not be a good idea to be already using it is production projects.

Answer 1

You can try to use json to turn it into a string, like this:

import json
v = [1, 2, 4]
s = json.dumps(v)

• igferne: oh I thought that json was only for java... I try this now, but how can I unserialize? thanks friend!!
• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: @igferne: There's volumes upon volumes of documentation at the Python website.

Answer 2

Pickle is a binary serialization, that's why you get a byte string.

Pros:

• more compact
• can express most of Python's objects.

Con's:

• bytes can be harder to handle
• Python only.

JSON is more universal, so you're not tied to reading data with Python. It's also mostly ASCII, so it's easier to handle. the con is that it's limited to numbers, strings, arrays and dicts. usually enough, but even datetimes have to be converted to string representation before encoding.

Answer 3

Doesn't MySQL let you store these pickled bytes in a blob?

Answer 4

... or perhaps just

str([1,2,4])

(if you dont necessarily need the data in json-format)