What is the best way to store data in Python? [closed]

Question

I'm creating a Skype bot for a group of friends, and I want to be able to have a somewhat login system for text-based games and storing information such as usernames, high scores, notes, friends list, messages, etc.

I was thinking of storing it in a text file named after the person's handle on Skype, however, I was wondering if there was a better way of doing it. Such as XML files.

I'd like to avoid SQL servers, and it's not like they're storing passwords so encryption won't be that much of a big deal. (I'd prefer local file storage. Something easily editable and delete-able)

I want to enable commands such as !note and !friends and !addfriend and !highscore and so on, but I need a method to save that information.

Answer 1

Have you considered pickle? It can store python objects (any object) to files so you can just load and use them.

import pickle

# Saving
data = [1,2,3,4]
pickle.dump(data, open("d:/temp/test.pkl","wb"))

# Loading
load = pickle.load(open("d:/temp/test.pkl","rb"))

For more info, read the docs

(Another option is the json module which serializes to json. It is used in a similar way, but can only save dictionaries, lists, strings and integers)