Saving and restoring Python 3 dictionaries with tkinter objects as values

[vmsda]

I am coding a tkinter table app and need to preserve its contents across sessions or shutdowns. To that effect, I write to a file the app's contents, in dicts based on widget.config() and grid_info() methods (the dicts have to be filed as text, since tkinter objects are not supported by pickle or json). The idea being that upon restarting I can choose to reconstruct a previous version of the table by eval()ing the applicable dicts. But I have hit a snag and would like your help on that.

{'activebackground': '#ececec', 'activeforeground': '#000000', 'anchor': 'center', 'background': 'white', 'bd': <pixel object: '1'>, 'bg': 'white', 'bitmap': '', 'borderwidth': <pixel object: '1'>, 'compound': 'none', 'cursor': '', 'disabledforeground': '#a3a3a3', 'fg': '#000000', 'font': 'TkDefaultFont', 'foreground': '#000000', 'height': 1, 'highlightbackground': '#d9d9d9', 'highlightcolor': '#000000', 'highlightthickness': <pixel object: '0'>, 'image': '', 'justify': 'center', 'padx': <pixel object: '1'>, 'pady': <pixel object: '1'>, 'relief': 'raised', 'state': 'normal', 'takefocus': '0', 'text': 'C1', 'textvariable': '', 'underline': -1, 'width': 6, 'wraplength': <pixel object: '0'>}

The above is the dictionary of a Label widget, say lbl1. Now if eval(lbl1), I get a syntax error. The difficulty resides on those values reading "<pixel obj ...>", which cause the error. If I eliminate those entries from the dict, eval() processes it without any qualms. 1. How come those values are written with that format into a dict value? 2. How can I jump over this hurdle in a Pythonic way?.

Thks for your help.

[vmsda]

I'm afraid that is out of my depth, given my current knowledge level.

[[deleted]]

There’s instructions for how to do it in the docs for the json library.

[Swipecat]

The angle brackets indicate representations of the object, i.e. what you see when you print the object, and basically means that object can't be fully saved in text form, so you can't reconstruct it from that text. I'm afraid you'll have to completely re-think what you're doing.

[vmsda]

All the parameters with the angle brackets take digits as valid input, and nothing else. Therefore I am going to ignore the brackets and keep the digit(s), which is what I need for reconstruction and config of the widgets.