Saving and loading simple data in Python convenient way

Question

I'm currently working on a simple Python 3.4.3 and Tkinter game.

I struggle with saving/reading data now, because I'm a beginner at coding.

What I do now is use .txt files to store my data, but I find this extremely counter-intuitive, as saving/reading more than one line of data requires of me to have additional code to catch any newlines.

Skipping a line would be terrible too.

I've googled it, but I either find .txt save/file options or way too complex ones for saving large-scale data.

I only need to save some strings right now and be able to access them (if possible) by key like in a dictionary key:value .

Do you know of any file format/method to help me accomplish that?

Also: If possible, should work on Win/iOS/Linux.

lemonhead · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-20 01:15:48Z

2

It sounds like using json would be best for this, which comes as part of the Python Standard library in Python-2.6+

import json

data = {'username':'John', 'health':98, 'weapon':'warhammer'}

# serialize the data to user-data.txt
with open('user-data.txt', 'w') as fobj:
    json.dump(data, fobj)

# read the data back in
with open('user-data.txt', 'r') as fobj:
    data = json.load(fobj)

print(data)
# outputs: 
# {u'username': u'John', u'weapon': u'warhammer', u'health': 98}

A popular alternative is yaml, which is actually a superset of json and produces slightly more human readable results.

edited Aug 20, 2015 at 1:15

answered Aug 19, 2015 at 23:48

lemonhead

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4 Comments

CyberGeneticist Over a year ago

It seems to be a good solution, unfortunately when I run the first half of your code, it throws a TypeError: 'str' does not support the buffer interface

lemonhead Over a year ago

oops, yeah sorry the 'binary' mode causes issues in python-3 because it's expecting strings to be properly encoded. The fix is to remove the b. Will update the answer

lemonhead Over a year ago

@xXthruXx, should work now in python3, can you give it another try?

CyberGeneticist Over a year ago

Works like a charm :) Thanks!

mrcheshire · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19 23:40:57Z

0

You might want to try Redis.

http://redis.io/

I'm not totally sure it'll meet all your needs, but it would probably be better than a flat file.

answered Aug 19, 2015 at 23:40

mrcheshire

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2 Comments

Cyphase Over a year ago

You're not sure if Redis would meet all of OP's needs? I would say Redis is waay overkill for this.

CyberGeneticist Over a year ago

I've looked through this and it's a sweet tool, but for this project it's too much compared to other, built-in options. Thanks anyway! :)

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