How to save a dictionary to a file?

Question

Python has the pickle module just for this kind of thing.

These functions are all that you need for saving and loading almost any object:

with open('saved_dictionary.pkl', 'wb') as f:
    pickle.dump(dictionary, f)
        
with open('saved_dictionary.pkl', 'rb') as f:
    loaded_dict = pickle.load(f)

In order to save collections of Python there is the shelve module.

Pickle is probably the best option, but in case anyone wonders how to save and load a dictionary to a file using NumPy:

import numpy as np

# Save
dictionary = {'hello':'world'}
np.save('my_file.npy', dictionary) 

# Load
read_dictionary = np.load('my_file.npy',allow_pickle='TRUE').item()
print(read_dictionary['hello']) # displays "world"

FYI: NPY file viewer

We can also use the json module in the case when dictionaries or some other data can be easily mapped to JSON format.

import json

# Serialize data into file:
json.dump( data, open( "file_name.json", 'w' ) )

# Read data from file:
data = json.load( open( "file_name.json" ) )

This solution brings many benefits, eg works for Python 2.x and Python 3.x in an unchanged form and in addition, data saved in JSON format can be easily transferred between many different platforms or programs. This data are also human-readable.

I'm not sure what your first question is, but if you want to save a dictionary to file you should use the json library. Look up the documentation of the loads and puts functions.

Save and load dict to file:

def save_dict_to_file(dic):
    f = open('dict.txt','w')
    f.write(str(dic))
    f.close()

def load_dict_from_file():
    f = open('dict.txt','r')
    data=f.read()
    f.close()
    return eval(data)

I would suggest saving your data using the JSON format instead of pickle format as JSON's files are human-readable which makes your debugging easier since your data is small. JSON files are also used by other programs to read and write data. You can read more about it here

You'll need to install the JSON module, you can do so with pip:

pip install json


# To save the dictionary into a file:
json.dump( data, open( "myfile.json", 'w' ) )

This creates a json file with the name myfile.

# To read data from file:
data = json.load( open( "myfile.json" ) )

This reads and stores the myfile.json data in a data object.

As Pickle has some security concerns and is slow (source), I would go for JSON, as it is fast, built-in, human-readable, and interchangeable:

import json
data = {'another_dict': {'a': 0, 'b': 1}, 'a_list': [0, 1, 2, 3]}
# e.g. file = './data.json' 
with open(file, 'w') as f: 
    json.dump(data, f)

Reading is similar easy:

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

This is similar to this answer, but implements the file handling correctly.