10.2 The anydbm Module

The anydbm module provides a unified interface to the simple database drivers supported by Python.

The first time it is imported, the anydbm module looks for a suitable database driver, testing for dbhash, gdbm, dbm, or dumbdbm, in that order. If no such module is found, it raises an ImportError exception.

In Example 10-1, the open function is used to open or create a database, using the chosen database handler.

Example 10-1. Using the anydbm Module

File: anydbm-example-1.py

import anydbm

db = anydbm.open("database", "c")
db["1"] = "one"
db["2"] = "two"
db["3"] = "three"
db.close()

db = anydbm.open("database", "r")
for key in db.keys():
    print repr(key), repr(db[key])

'2' 'two'
'3' 'three'
'1' 'one'