Effective Serialization with Python

Learn about serialization formats such as JSON and msgpack, how to work with each format, and how to pick the right one for your Python project.

Introduction

• Serialization with Python
• What you should know
• Accessing the exercise files on GitHub
• Use Codespaces for this course

1. Serialization Overview

• Why do we need serialization?
• Picking a serialization format
• General serialization rules
• Serialization formats overview

2. Python Specific Serialization Formats

• Marshal and pickle serialization
• Serialization with repr
• Using eval and exec for serialization
• Challenge: repr and read pickle
• Solution: repr and read pickle

3. JSON Serialization

• Basic JSON serialization
• Serializing custom types to JSON
• Streaming JSON
• Challenge: Convert log records to JSON
• Solution: Convert log records to JSON

4. Protocol Buffers Serialization

• Protocol buffers overview
• Writing the definition file
• Generating serializers
• Using protocol buffers
• gRPC
• Challenge: Trade objects size
• Solution: Trade objects size

5. Other Serialization Formats

• msgpack serialization
• YAML serialization
• XML serialization
• SQL
• TOML
• Challenge: ETL from XML to database
• Solution: ETL from XML to database

6. Unicode

• What's Unicode?
• str and Bytes
• Normalization
• Case-insensitive comparison
• Detect encoding
• Challenge: Counting strings
• Solution: Counting strings

Conclusion

• Next steps