I need to save about a dozen objects to a file and then restore them later. I’ve tried to use a for loop with pickle and shelve but it didn’t work right.

Edit.
All of the objects that I was trying to save were in the same class (I should have mentioned this before), and I didn’t realize that I could just save the whole class like this:

import pickle
def saveLoad(opt):
    global calc
    if opt == "save":
        f = file(filename, 'wb')
        pickle.dump(calc, f, 2)
        f.close
        print 'data saved'
    elif opt == "load":
        f = file(filename, 'rb')
        calc = pickle.load(f)
    else:
        print 'Invalid saveLoad option'

If you need to save multiple objects, you can simply put them in a single list, or tuple, for instance:

import pickle

# obj0, obj1, obj2 are created here...

# Saving the objects:
with open('objs.pkl', 'w') as f:  # Python 3: open(..., 'wb')
    pickle.dump([obj0, obj1, obj2], f)

# Getting back the objects:
with open('objs.pkl') as f:  # Python 3: open(..., 'rb')
    obj0, obj1, obj2 = pickle.load(f)

If you have a lot of data, you can reduce the file size by passing protocol=-1 to dump(); pickle will then use the best available protocol instead of the default historical (and more backward-compatible) protocol. In this case, the file must be opened in binary mode (wb and rb, respectively).

The binary mode should also be used with Python 3, as its default protocol produces binary (i.e. non-text) data (writing mode 'wb' and reading mode 'rb').

There is a built-in library called pickle. Using pickle you can dump objects to a file and load them later.

import pickle

f = open('store.pckl', 'wb')
pickle.dump(obj, f)
f.close()

f = open('store.pckl', 'rb')
obj = pickle.load(f)
f.close()

You should look at the shelve and pickle modules. If you need to store a lot of data it may be better to use a database

Another approach to saving multiple variables to a pickle file is:

import pickle

a = 3; b = [11,223,435];
pickle.dump([a,b], open("trial.p", "wb"))

c,d = pickle.load(open("trial.p","rb"))

print(c,d) ## To verify

You could use klepto, which provides persistent caching to memory, disk, or database.

dude@hilbert>$ python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 12 2013, 13:26:39) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.1 ((tags/Apple/clang-421.11.66))] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from klepto.archives import file_archive
>>> db = file_archive('foo.txt')
>>> db['1'] = 1
>>> db['max'] = max
>>> squared = lambda x: x**2
>>> db['squared'] = squared
>>> def add(x,y):
...   return x+y
... 
>>> db['add'] = add
>>> class Foo(object):
...   y = 1
...   def bar(self, x):
...     return self.y + x
... 
>>> db['Foo'] = Foo
>>> f = Foo()
>>> db['f'] = f  
>>> db.dump()
>>> 

Then, after interpreter restart…

dude@hilbert>$ python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 12 2013, 13:26:39) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.1 ((tags/Apple/clang-421.11.66))] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from klepto.archives import file_archive
>>> db = file_archive('foo.txt')
>>> db
file_archive('foo.txt', {}, cached=True)
>>> db.load()
>>> db
file_archive('foo.txt', {'1': 1, 'add': <function add at 0x10610a0c8>, 'f': <__main__.Foo object at 0x10510ced0>, 'max': <built-in function max>, 'Foo': <class '__main__.Foo'>, 'squared': <function <lambda> at 0x10610a1b8>}, cached=True)
>>> db['add'](2,3)
5
>>> db['squared'](3)
9
>>> db['f'].bar(4)
5
>>> 

Get the code here: https://github.com/uqfoundation

The following approach seems simple and can be used with variables of different size:

import hickle as hkl
# write variables to filename [a,b,c can be of any size]
hkl.dump([a,b,c], filename)

# load variables from filename
a,b,c = hkl.load(filename)