Serialize
Data serialization definition:
Data serialization is the process of converting complex data structures, such as objects or dictionaries, into a format that can be stored or transmitted, such as a byte stream or JSON string. This is useful in modern data pipelines for tasks such as saving data to disk, transmitting data across a network, or storing data in a database.
Data serialization example using Python:
Python provides several built-in serialization formats, including pickle, JSON, and YAML. Here's an example of using the pickle module to serialize a Python object:
import pickle
# Define an object to serialize
data = {
'name': 'Dagster',
'age': 4,
'email': 'dagster@elementl.com'
}
# Serialize the object to a byte stream
serialized_data = pickle.dumps(data)
# Write the byte stream to a file
with open('data.pickle', 'wb') as f:
f.write(serialized_data)
```
This code defines a dictionary data and then serializes it using the pickle module's `dumps()` method. The resulting byte stream is then written to a file named data.pickle. If you open the file you will see the data written out as:
��=}�(�name��Dagster��age�K�email��dagster@elementl.com�u.
To deserialize the data later, you can use the `loads()` method:
```python
import pickle
# Read the byte stream from the file
with open('data.pickle', 'rb') as f:
serialized_data = f.read()
# Deserialize the byte stream into a Python object
data = pickle.loads(serialized_data)
# Print the deserialized data
print(data)
This code reads the serialized data from the file, deserializes it using pickle's loads()
method, and then prints the resulting Python object.