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<span id="id1"></span><h1>Data Persistence<a class="headerlink" href="#data-persistence" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>The standard library includes a variety of modules for persisting data. The most common pattern for storing data from Python objects for reuse is to serialize them with <a class="reference internal" href="pickle/index.html#module-pickle" title="pickle: Python object serialization"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">pickle</span></tt></a> and then either write them directly to a file or store them using one of the many key-value pair database formats available with the <em>dbm</em> API. If you don’t care about the underlying dbm format, the best persistence interface is provided by <a class="reference internal" href="shelve/index.html#module-shelve" title="shelve: Persistent storage of arbitrary Python objects"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">shelve</span></tt></a>. If you do care, you can use one of the other dbm-based modules directly.</p>
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<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="anydbm/index.html">anydbm – Access to DBM-style databases</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="dbhash/index.html">dbhash – DBM-style API for the BSD database library</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="dbm/index.html">dbm – Simple database interface</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="dumbdbm/index.html">dumbdbm – Portable DBM Implementation</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="gdbm/index.html">gdbm – GNU’s version of the dbm library</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="pickle/index.html">pickle and cPickle – Python object serialization</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="shelve/index.html">shelve – Persistent storage of arbitrary Python objects</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="whichdb/index.html">whichdb – Identify DBM-style database formats</a></li>
<li class="toctree-l1"><a class="reference internal" href="sqlite3/index.html">sqlite3 – Embedded Relational Database</a></li>
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<p>For serializing over the web, the <a class="reference internal" href="json/index.html#module-json" title="json: JavaScript Object Notation Serializer"><tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">json</span></tt></a> module may be a better choice since its format is more portable.</p>
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<p class="last"><a class="reference internal" href="articles/data_persistence.html#article-data-persistence"><em>Data Persistence and Exchange</em></a></p>
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