dict
, backed-up by SQLite and pickle
sqlitedict -- persistent
A lightweight wrapper around Python's sqlite3 database with a simple, Pythonic dict-like interface and support for multi-thread access:
>>> from sqlitedict import SqliteDict
>>> mydict = SqliteDict('./my_db.sqlite', autocommit=True)
>>> mydict['some_key'] = 'any_picklable_object'
>>> print(mydict['some_key']) # prints the new value
any_picklable_object
>>> for key, value in mydict.iteritems():
... print(key, value)
some_key any_picklable_object
>>> print(len(mydict)) # etc... all dict functions work
1
>>> mydict.close()
Pickle is used internally to (de)serialize the values. Keys are arbitrary strings, values arbitrary pickle-able objects.
If you don't use autocommit (default is no autocommit for performance), then don't forget to call mydict.commit()
when done with a transaction:
>>> # using SqliteDict as context manager works too (RECOMMENDED)
>>> with SqliteDict('./my_db.sqlite') as mydict: # note no autocommit=True
... mydict['some_key'] = u"first value"
... mydict['another_key'] = range(10)
... mydict.commit()
... mydict['some_key'] = u"new value"
... # no explicit commit here
>>> with SqliteDict('./my_db.sqlite') as mydict: # re-open the same DB
... print(mydict['some_key']) # outputs 'first value', not 'new value'
first value
Features
Values can be any picklable objects (uses
cPickle
with the highest protocol).Support for multiple tables (=dicts) living in the same database file.
Support for access from multiple threads to the same connection (needed by e.g. Pyro). Vanilla sqlite3 gives you
ProgrammingError: SQLite objects created in a thread can only be used in that same thread.
Concurrent requests are still serialized internally, so this "multithreaded support" doesn't give you any performance benefits. It is a work-around for sqlite limitations in Python.
Support for custom serialization or compression:
# use JSON instead of pickle
>>> import json
>>> mydict = SqliteDict('./my_db.sqlite', encode=json.dumps, decode=json.loads)
# apply zlib compression after pickling
>>> import zlib, pickle, sqlite3
>>> def my_encode(obj):
... return sqlite3.Binary(zlib.compress(pickle.dumps(obj, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)))
>>> def my_decode(obj):
... return pickle.loads(zlib.decompress(bytes(obj)))
>>> mydict = SqliteDict('./my_db.sqlite', encode=my_encode, decode=my_decode)
Installation
The module has no dependencies beyond Python itself. The minimum Python version is 2.5, continuously tested on Python 2.7, and above on on Github Actions.
Install or upgrade with:
pip install -U sqlitedict
or from the source tar.gz:
python setup.py install
Documentation
Standard Python document strings are inside the module:
import sqlitedict
help(sqlitedict)
(but it's just dict
with a commit, really).
Beware: because of Python semantics, sqlitedict
cannot know when a mutable SqliteDict-backed entry was modified in RAM. For example, mydict.setdefault('new_key', []).append(1)
will leave mydict['new_key']
equal to empty list, not [1]
. You'll need to explicitly assign the mutated object back to SqliteDict to achieve the same effect:
>>> val = mydict.get('new_key', [])
>>> val.append(1) # sqlite DB not updated here!
>>> mydict['new_key'] = val # now updated
For developers
Install:
# pip install pytest coverage pytest-coverage
To perform all tests:
# mkdir -p tests/db # pytest tests
To perform all tests with coverage:
# pytest tests --cov=sqlitedict
Comments, bug reports
sqlitedict
resides on github. You can file issues or pull requests there.
Housekeeping
>>> import os
>>> os.unlink('my_db.sqlite')
sqlitedict
is open source software released under the Apache 2.0 license. Copyright (c) 2011-now Radim Řehůřek and contributors.