Is there a way to store python objects directly in mongoDB without serializing them

Question

I have read somewhere that you can store python objects (more specifically dictionaries) as binaries in MongoDB by using BSON. However right now I cannot find any any documentation related to this.

Would anyone know how exactly this can be done?

Answer 1

There isn't a way to store an object in a file (database) without serializing it. If the data needs to move from one process to another process or to another server, it will need to be serialized in some form to be transmitted. Since you're asking about MongoDB, the data will absolutely be serialized in some form in order to be stored in the MongoDB database. When using MongoDB, it's BSON.

If you're actually asking about whether there would be a way to store a more raw form of a Python object in a MongoDB document, you can insert a Binary field into a document which can contain any data you'd like. It's not directly queryable in any way in that form, so you're potentially loosing a lot of the benefits of using a NoSQL document database like MongoDB.

>>> from pymongo import MongoClient
>>> client = MongoClient('localhost', 27017)
>>> db = client['test-database']
>>> coll = db.test_collection    
>>> # the collection is ready now 
>>> from bson.binary import Binary
>>> import pickle
>>> # create a sample object
>>> myObj = {}
>>> myObj['demo'] = 'Some demo data'
>>> # convert it to the raw bytes
>>> thebytes = pickle.dumps(myObj)
>>> coll.insert({'bin-data': Binary(thebytes)})