Python multiprocessing PicklingError: Can't pickle <type 'function'>

I have found that I can also generate exactly that error output on a perfectly working piece of code by attempting to use the profiler on it.

Note that this was on Windows (where the forking is a bit less elegant).

I was running:

python -m profile -o output.pstats <script> 

And found that removing the profiling removed the error and placing the profiling restored it. Was driving me batty too because I knew the code used to work. I was checking to see if something had updated pool.py… then had a sinking feeling and eliminated the profiling and that was it.

Posting here for the archives in case anybody else runs into it.

I’d use pathos.multiprocesssing, instead of multiprocessing. pathos.multiprocessing is a fork of multiprocessing that uses dill. dill can serialize almost anything in python, so you are able to send a lot more around in parallel. The pathos fork also has the ability to work directly with multiple argument functions, as you need for class methods.

>>> from pathos.multiprocessing import ProcessingPool as Pool
>>> p = Pool(4)
>>> class Test(object):
...   def plus(self, x, y): 
...     return x+y
... 
>>> t = Test()
>>> p.map(t.plus, x, y)
[4, 6, 8, 10]
>>> 
>>> class Foo(object):
...   @staticmethod
...   def work(self, x):
...     return x+1
... 
>>> f = Foo()
>>> p.apipe(f.work, f, 100)
<processing.pool.ApplyResult object at 0x10504f8d0>
>>> res = _
>>> res.get()
101

Get pathos (and if you like, dill) here:
https://github.com/uqfoundation

As others have said multiprocessing can only transfer Python objects to worker processes which can be pickled. If you cannot reorganize your code as described by unutbu, you can use dills extended pickling/unpickling capabilities for transferring data (especially code data) as I show below.

This solution requires only the installation of dill and no other libraries as pathos:

import os
from multiprocessing import Pool

import dill


def run_dill_encoded(payload):
    fun, args = dill.loads(payload)
    return fun(*args)


def apply_async(pool, fun, args):
    payload = dill.dumps((fun, args))
    return pool.apply_async(run_dill_encoded, (payload,))


if __name__ == "__main__":

    pool = Pool(processes=5)

    # asyn execution of lambda
    jobs = []
    for i in range(10):
        job = apply_async(pool, lambda a, b: (a, b, a * b), (i, i + 1))
        jobs.append(job)

    for job in jobs:
        print job.get()
    print

    # async execution of static method

    class O(object):

        @staticmethod
        def calc():
            return os.getpid()

    jobs = []
    for i in range(10):
        job = apply_async(pool, O.calc, ())
        jobs.append(job)

    for job in jobs:
        print job.get()

This solution requires only the installation of dill and no other libraries as pathos

def apply_packed_function_for_map((dumped_function, item, args, kwargs),):
    """
    Unpack dumped function as target function and call it with arguments.

    :param (dumped_function, item, args, kwargs):
        a tuple of dumped function and its arguments
    :return:
        result of target function
    """
    target_function = dill.loads(dumped_function)
    res = target_function(item, *args, **kwargs)
    return res


def pack_function_for_map(target_function, items, *args, **kwargs):
    """
    Pack function and arguments to object that can be sent from one
    multiprocessing.Process to another. The main problem is:
        «multiprocessing.Pool.map*» or «apply*»
        cannot use class methods or closures.
    It solves this problem with «dill».
    It works with target function as argument, dumps it («with dill»)
    and returns dumped function with arguments of target function.
    For more performance we dump only target function itself
    and don't dump its arguments.
    How to use (pseudo-code):

        ~>>> import multiprocessing
        ~>>> images = [...]
        ~>>> pool = multiprocessing.Pool(100500)
        ~>>> features = pool.map(
        ~...     *pack_function_for_map(
        ~...         super(Extractor, self).extract_features,
        ~...         images,
        ~...         type='png'
        ~...         **options,
        ~...     )
        ~... )
        ~>>>

    :param target_function:
        function, that you want to execute like  target_function(item, *args, **kwargs).
    :param items:
        list of items for map
    :param args:
        positional arguments for target_function(item, *args, **kwargs)
    :param kwargs:
        named arguments for target_function(item, *args, **kwargs)
    :return: tuple(function_wrapper, dumped_items)
        It returs a tuple with
            * function wrapper, that unpack and call target function;
            * list of packed target function and its' arguments.
    """
    dumped_function = dill.dumps(target_function)
    dumped_items = [(dumped_function, item, args, kwargs) for item in items]
    return apply_packed_function_for_map, dumped_items

It also works for numpy arrays.

Can't pickle <type 'function'>: attribute lookup __builtin__.function failed

This error will also come if you have any inbuilt function inside the model object that was passed to the async job.

So make sure to check the model objects that are passed doesn’t have inbuilt functions. (In our case we were using FieldTracker() function of django-model-utils inside the model to track a certain field). Here is the link to relevant GitHub issue.

Building on @rocksportrocker solution,
It would make sense to dill when sending and RECVing the results.

import dill
import itertools
def run_dill_encoded(payload):
    fun, args = dill.loads(payload)
    res = fun(*args)
    res = dill.dumps(res)
    return res

def dill_map_async(pool, fun, args_list,
                   as_tuple=True,
                   **kw):
    if as_tuple:
        args_list = ((x,) for x in args_list)

    it = itertools.izip(
        itertools.cycle([fun]),
        args_list)
    it = itertools.imap(dill.dumps, it)
    return pool.map_async(run_dill_encoded, it, **kw)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import multiprocessing as mp
    import sys,os
    p = mp.Pool(4)
    res = dill_map_async(p, lambda x:[sys.stdout.write('%sn'%os.getpid()),x][-1],
                  [lambda x:x+1]*10,)
    res = res.get(timeout=100)
    res = map(dill.loads,res)
    print(res)

When this problem comes up with multiprocessing a simple solution is to switch from Pool to ThreadPool. This can be done with no change of code other than the import-

from multiprocessing.pool import ThreadPool as Pool

This works because ThreadPool shares memory with the main thread, rather than creating a new process- this means that pickling is not required.

The downside to this method is that python isn’t the greatest language with handling threads- it uses something called the Global Interpreter Lock to stay thread safe, which can slow down some use cases here. However, if you’re primarily interacting with other systems (running HTTP commands, talking with a database, writing to filesystems) then your code is likely not bound by CPU and won’t take much of a hit. In fact I’ve found when writing HTTP/HTTPS benchmarks that the threaded model used here has less overhead and delays, as the overhead from creating new processes is much higher than the overhead for creating new threads and the program was otherwise just waiting for HTTP responses.

So if you’re processing a ton of stuff in python userspace this might not be the best method.

As @penky Suresh has suggested in this answer, don’t use built-in keywords.

Apparently args is a built-in keyword when dealing with multiprocessing

class TTS:
    def __init__(self):
        pass

    def process_and_render_items(self):
        multiprocessing_args = [{"a": "b", "c": "d"}, {"e": "f", "g": "h"}]

        with ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=10) as executor:
          # Using args here is fine. 
            future_processes = {
              executor.submit(TTS.process_and_render_item, args)
                for args in multiprocessing_args
            }

            for future in as_completed(future_processes):
                try:
                    data = future.result()
                except Exception as exc:
                    print(f"Generated an exception: {exc}")
                else:
                   print(f"Generated data for comment process: {future}")
 

    # Dont use 'args' here. It seems to be a built-in keyword.
    # Changing 'args' to 'arg' worked for me.
    def process_and_render_item(arg):
        print(arg)
      # This will print {"a": "b", "c": "d"} for the first process
      # and {"e": "f", "g": "h"} for the second process.

PS: The tabs/spaces maybe a bit off.

A quick fix is to make the function global

from multiprocessing import Pool


class Test:
    def __init__(self, x):
        self.x = x
    
    @staticmethod
    def test(x):
        return x**2


    def test_apply(self, list_):
        global r
        def r(x):
            return Test.test(x + self.x)

        with Pool() as p:
            l = p.map(r, list_)

        return l



if __name__ == '__main__':
    o = Test(2)
    print(o.test_apply(range(10)))