Effective Serialization with Python

Course details

When you're making calls between different services, you can use serialization to move data around in a predictable manner for easy encoding and decoding. In this course, instructor Miki Tebeka takes a deep dive into the subject of serialization with Python, exploring key serialization formats, how to work with each format, and how to pick the right one for your Python project. He covers Python-specific serialization formats such as marshal and pickle; how to serialize and deserialize using JSON; how to encode and decode messages and serialize using protocol buffers; how to use msgpack; and more. Along the way, he shares challenges that allow you to put your new knowledge to the test.

Concepts

Introduction

Serialization with Python
What you should know
Accessing the exercise files on GitHub

Serialization Overview

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

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

JSON Serialization

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

Protocol Buffers Serialization

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

Other Serialization Formats

msgpack serialization
YAML serialization
XML serialization
SQL
Challenge - ETL from XML to database
Solution - ETL from XML to database

Unicode

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

Conclusion

Next steps