How to store and load a Python dictionary with HDF5

I'm having issues loading (I think storing is working – a file is being created and contains data) a dictionary (string key and array/list value) from a HDF5 file. I'm receiving the following error:

ValueError: malformed node or string: < HDF5 dataset "dataset_1": shape (), type "|O" >

My code is:

import h5py

def store_table(self, filename):
    table = dict()
    table['test'] = list(np.zeros(7,dtype=int))

    with h5py.File(filename, "w") as file:
        file.create_dataset('dataset_1', data=str(table))
        file.close()


def load_table(self, filename):
    file = h5py.File(filename, "r")
    data = file.get('dataset_1')
    print(ast.literal_eval(data))

I've read online using the ast method literal_eval should work but it doesn't appear to help... How do I 'unpack' the HDF5 so it's a dictionary again?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

If I understand what you are trying to do, this should work:

import numpy as np
import ast
import h5py


def store_table(filename):
    table = dict()
    table['test'] = list(np.zeros(7,dtype=int))

    with h5py.File(filename, "w") as file:
        file.create_dataset('dataset_1', data=str(table))


def load_table(filename):
    file = h5py.File(filename, "r")
    data = file.get('dataset_1')[...].tolist()
    file.close();
    return ast.literal_eval(data)

filename = "file.h5"
store_table(filename)
data = load_table(filename)
print(data)