12.2. copyreg — Register pickle support functions

The copyreg module offers a way to define functions used while pickling specific objects. The pickle and copy modules use those functions when pickling/copying those objects. The module provides configuration information about object constructors which are not classes. Such constructors may be factory functions or class instances.

copyreg.constructor(object)

Declares object to be a valid constructor. If object is not callable (and hence not valid as a constructor), raises TypeError.

copyreg.pickle(type, function, constructor=None)

Declares that function should be used as a “reduction” function for objects of type type. function should return either a string or a tuple containing two or three elements.

The optional constructor parameter, if provided, is a callable object which can be used to reconstruct the object when called with the tuple of arguments returned by function at pickling time. TypeError will be raised if object is a class or constructor is not callable.

See the pickle module for more details on the interface expected of function and constructor. Note that the dispatch_table attribute of a pickler object or subclass of pickle.Pickler can also be used for declaring reduction functions.

>>> import copyreg, copy, pickle
>>> class C(object):
...     def __init__(self, a):
...         self.a = a
...
>>> def pickle_c(c):
...     print("pickling a C instance...")
...     return C, (c.a,)
...
>>> copyreg.pickle(C, pickle_c)
>>> c = C(1)
>>> d = copy.copy(c)
pickling a C instance...
>>> p = pickle.dumps(c)
pickling a C instance...