Pickle: TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str' [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

Using pickle.dump - TypeError: must be str, not bytes (2 answers)

Closed last year.

I keep on getting this error when I run the following code in python 3:

fname1 = "auth_cache_%s" % username
fname=fname1.encode(encoding='utf_8')
#fname=fname1.encode()
if os.path.isfile(fname,) and cached:
    response = pickle.load(open(fname))
else:
    response = self.heartbeat()
    f = open(fname,"w")
    pickle.dump(response, f)

Here is the error I get:

File "C:\Users\Dorien Xia\Desktop\Pokemon-Go-Bot-Working-Hack-API-master\pgoapi\pgoapi.py", line 345, in login
    response = pickle.load(open(fname))
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

I tried converting the fname1 to bytes via the encode function, but It still isn't fixing the problem. Can someone tell me what's wrong?

Answer 1

You need to open the file in binary mode:

file = open(fname, 'rb')
response = pickle.load(file)
file.close()

And when writing:

file = open(fname, 'wb')
pickle.dump(response, file)
file.close()

---

As an aside, you should use with to handle opening/closing files:

When reading:

with open(fname, 'rb') as file:
    response = pickle.load(file)

And when writing:

with open(fname, 'wb') as file:
    pickle.dump(response, file)

Answer 2

In Python 3 you need to specifically call either 'rb' or 'wb'.

with open('C:\Users\Dorien Xia\Desktop\Pokemon-Go-Bot-Working-Hack-API-master\pgoapi\pgoapi.py', 'rb') as file:
    data = pickle.load(file)

Answer 3

You need to change 'str' to 'bytes'. Try this:

class StrToBytes:
    def __init__(self, fileobj):
        self.fileobj = fileobj
    def read(self, size):
        return self.fileobj.read(size).encode()
    def readline(self, size=-1):
        return self.fileobj.readline(size).encode()

with open(fname, 'r') as f:
    obj = pickle.load(StrToBytes(f))

Answer 4

I keep coming back to this stack overflow link, so I'm posting the real answer for the next time I come looking for it:

PickleDB is messed up and needs to be fixed.

Line 201 of pickledb.py

From:

simplejson.dump(self.db, open(self.loco, 'wb'))

to:

simplejson.dump(self.db, open(self.loco, 'wt'))

Problem solved forever.