How to Reduce the time taken to load a pickle file in python

Question

I have created a dictionary in python and dumped into pickle. Its size went to 300MB. Now, I want to load the same pickle.

output = open('myfile.pkl', 'rb')
mydict = pickle.load(output)

Loading this pickle takes around 15 seconds. How can I reduce this time?

Hardware Specification: Ubuntu 14.04, 4GB RAM

The code bellow shows how much time takes to dump or load a file using json, pickle, cPickle.

After dumping, file size would be around 300MB.

import json, pickle, cPickle
import os, timeit
import json

mydict= {all values to be added}

def dump_json():    
    output = open('myfile1.json', 'wb')
    json.dump(mydict, output)
    output.close()    

def dump_pickle():    
    output = open('myfile2.pkl', 'wb')
    pickle.dump(mydict, output,protocol=cPickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)
    output.close()

def dump_cpickle():    
    output = open('myfile3.pkl', 'wb')
    cPickle.dump(mydict, output,protocol=cPickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)
    output.close()

def load_json():
    output = open('myfile1.json', 'rb')
    mydict = json.load(output)
    output.close()

def load_pickle():
    output = open('myfile2.pkl', 'rb')
    mydict = pickle.load(output)
    output.close()

def load_cpickle():
    output = open('myfile3.pkl', 'rb')
    mydict = pickle.load(output)
    output.close()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    print "Json dump: "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.dump_json()", setup="import pickle_wr")  
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

    print "Pickle dump: "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.dump_pickle()", setup="import pickle_wr")  
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

    print "cPickle dump: "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.dump_cpickle()", setup="import pickle_wr")  
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

    print "Json load: "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.load_json()", setup="import pickle_wr")  
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

    print "pickle load: "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.load_pickle()", setup="import pickle_wr")  
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

    print "cPickle load: "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.load_cpickle()", setup="import pickle_wr")  
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

Output :

Json dump: 
42.5809804916 

Pickle dump: 
52.87407804489 

cPickle dump: 
1.1903790187836 

Json load: 
12.240660209656 

pickle load: 
24.48748306274 

cPickle load: 
24.4888298893

I have seen that cPickle takes less time to dump and load but loading a file still takes a long time.

Answer 1

Try using the json library instead of pickle. This should be an option in your case because you're dealing with a dictionary which is a relatively simple object.

According to this website,

JSON is 25 times faster in reading (loads) and 15 times faster in writing (dumps).

Also see this question: What is faster - Loading a pickled dictionary object or Loading a JSON file - to a dictionary?

Upgrading Python or using the marshal module with a fixed Python version also helps boost speed (code adapted from here):

try: import cPickle
except: import pickle as cPickle
import pickle
import json, marshal, random
from time import time
from hashlib import md5

test_runs = 1000

if __name__ == "__main__":
    payload = {
        "float": [(random.randrange(0, 99) + random.random()) for i in range(1000)],
        "int": [random.randrange(0, 9999) for i in range(1000)],
        "str": [md5(str(random.random()).encode('utf8')).hexdigest() for i in range(1000)]
    }
    modules = [json, pickle, cPickle, marshal]

    for payload_type in payload:
        data = payload[payload_type]
        for module in modules:
            start = time()
            if module.__name__ in ['pickle', 'cPickle']:
                for i in range(test_runs): serialized = module.dumps(data, protocol=-1)
            else:
                for i in range(test_runs): serialized = module.dumps(data)
            w = time() - start
            start = time()
            for i in range(test_runs):
                unserialized = module.loads(serialized)
            r = time() - start
            print("%s %s W %.3f R %.3f" % (module.__name__, payload_type, w, r))

Results:

C:\Python27\python.exe -u "serialization_benchmark.py"
json int W 0.125 R 0.156
pickle int W 2.808 R 1.139
cPickle int W 0.047 R 0.046
marshal int W 0.016 R 0.031
json float W 1.981 R 0.624
pickle float W 2.607 R 1.092
cPickle float W 0.063 R 0.062
marshal float W 0.047 R 0.031
json str W 0.172 R 0.437
pickle str W 5.149 R 2.309
cPickle str W 0.281 R 0.156
marshal str W 0.109 R 0.047

C:\pypy-1.6\pypy-c -u "serialization_benchmark.py"
json int W 0.515 R 0.452
pickle int W 0.546 R 0.219
cPickle int W 0.577 R 0.171
marshal int W 0.032 R 0.031
json float W 2.390 R 1.341
pickle float W 0.656 R 0.436
cPickle float W 0.593 R 0.406
marshal float W 0.327 R 0.203
json str W 1.141 R 1.186
pickle str W 0.702 R 0.546
cPickle str W 0.828 R 0.562
marshal str W 0.265 R 0.078

c:\Python34\python -u "serialization_benchmark.py"
json int W 0.203 R 0.140
pickle int W 0.047 R 0.062
pickle int W 0.031 R 0.062
marshal int W 0.031 R 0.047
json float W 1.935 R 0.749
pickle float W 0.047 R 0.062
pickle float W 0.047 R 0.062
marshal float W 0.047 R 0.047
json str W 0.281 R 0.187
pickle str W 0.125 R 0.140
pickle str W 0.125 R 0.140
marshal str W 0.094 R 0.078

Python 3.4 uses pickle protocol 3 as default, which gave no difference compared to protocol 4. Python 2 has protocol 2 as highest pickle protocol (selected if negative value is provided to dump), which is twice as slow as protocol 3.

Answer 2

I've had nice results in reading huge files (e.g: ~750 MB igraph object - a binary pickle file) using cPickle itself. This was achieved by simply wrapping up the pickle load call as mentioned here

Example snippet in your case would be something like:

import timeit
import cPickle as pickle
import gc


def load_cpickle_gc():
    output = open('myfile3.pkl', 'rb')

    # disable garbage collector
    gc.disable()

    mydict = pickle.load(output)

    # enable garbage collector again
    gc.enable()
    output.close()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    print "cPickle load (with gc workaround): "
    t = timeit.Timer(stmt="pickle_wr.load_cpickle_gc()", setup="import pickle_wr")
    print t.timeit(1),'\n'

Surely, there might be more apt ways to get the task done, however, this workaround does reduce the time required drastically. (For me, it reduced from 843.04s to 41.28s, around 20x)

Answer 3

If you are trying to store the dictionary to a single file, it's the load time for the large file that is slowing you down. One of the easiest things you can do is to write the dictionary to a directory on disk, with each dictionary entry being an individual file. Then you can have the files pickled and unpickled in multiple threads (or using multiprocessing). For a very large dictionary, this should be much faster than reading to and from a single file, regardless of the serializer you choose. There are some packages like klepto and joblib that already do much (if not all of the above) for you. I'd check those packages out. (Note: I am the klepto author. See https://github.com/uqfoundation/klepto).