What would be the best way of storing a python list of numbers (such as [4, 7, 10, 39, 91]) to a database? I am using the Pyramid framework with SQLAlchemy to communicate to a database.
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2That's sure vague. There are an indefinite number of ways of storing a list in a database. Without some more requirements, it's hard to pick one. – S.Lott Jun 03 '11 at 02:31
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Tell us about what you mean by best. – Tim McNamara Jun 03 '11 at 05:43
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I will literally take any suggestions. – retnuh Jun 04 '11 at 18:21
4 Answers
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You can use json to save your arrays in db as stings:
In [1]: import json
In [2]: json.dumps([1, 2, 3])
Out[2]: '[1, 2, 3]'
In [3]: json.loads(json.dumps([1, 2, 3]))
Out[3]: [1, 2, 3]
also consider using cjson for better performances and anyjson for nice fallbacks.
neurino
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`cjson` looks interesting. I didn't realize JSON performance was something to be concerned with, but I see a bunch of benchmarking info of different JSON python libs. [Here's](https://github.com/rtyler/py-yajl/blob/master/compare.py) a nice comparison script I found from [another SO question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/706101/python-json-decoding-performance). – Banjer Aug 11 '13 at 15:30
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Well conceptually you can store a list as a bunch of rows in a table using a one-to-many relation, or you can focus on how to store a list in a particular database backend. For example postgres can store an array in a particular cell using the sqlalchemy.dialects.postgres.ARRAY data type which can serialize a python array into a postgres array column.
Michael Merickel
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Use string(Varchar). From Zen of Python: "Simple is better than complex."
Eugene Nagorny
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