PKL Viewer

View Python pickle (.pkl) files directly in VS Code. Defaults to a quick, safe disassembly of the pickle file which does not execute any code. Optionally, load the file using pickle for a more readable format.

Available on VS Code Marketplace.

Features

• Quick and safe pickle disassembly (no code execution, uses pickletools)
• Option to view the pickle file in a more readable format (uses pickle; may be unsafe for untrusted files, beware)
• No additional setup: activates as soon as you open a .pkl file

Examples

Default View:

Readable Format:

Installation

Click the "Install" button. Make sure you have the Python extension for VS Code. Also make sure Python is installed and available in your system path.

Contributing

Feel free to open issues and pull requests. I'll be regularly checking activity on the repository!

License

This extension is released under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.

For Athena Award: Reflection

I made this extension because one of my friends uses pickle a lot for their projects and expressed interest in something that would make their work a lot easier, which is a visualization tool for these files. I built this mainly using TypeScript as well as the Python packages pickle and pickletools. The main challenge I faced was optimizing the extension: I realized that un-pickling is pretty slow and also potentially unsafe to do automatically. The way I got past this obstacle was by using pickletools as the default viewer, which is faster and safer (but less readable), and then added a button that allows the user to open the pickle file in a more readable way, but warns them that it could be slow and unsafe.