Is there a standalone Python type conversion library?

Question

Are there any standalone type conversion libraries?

I have a data storage system that only understands bytes/strings, but I can tag metadata such as the type to be conve

Answer 1

You've got two options, either use the struct or pickle modules.

With struct you specify a format and it compacts your data to byte array. This is useful for working with C structures or writing to networked apps that require are binary protocol.

pickle can automatically serialise and deserialise complex Python structures to a string. There are some caveats so it's best read the documentation. I think this is the most likely the library you want.

>>> import pickle
>>> v = pickle.dumps(123)
>>> v
'I123\n.'
>>> pickle.loads(v)
123
>>> v = pickle.dumps({"abc": 123})
>>> v
"(dp0\nS'abc'\np1\nI123\ns."
>>> pickle.loads(v)
{'abc': 123}