python - Writing a dict to txt file and reading it back?

Question

I am trying to write a dictionary to a txt file. Then read the dict values by typing the keys with raw_input. I feel like I am just missing one step but I have been looking for a while now.

I get this error

File "name.py", line 24, in reading
    print whip[name]
TypeError: string indices must be integers, not str

My code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from sys import exit

class Person(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.name = ""
        self.address = ""
        self.phone = ""
        self.age = ""
        self.whip = {}

    def writing(self):
        self.whip[p.name] = p.age, p.address, p.phone
        target = open('deed.txt', 'a')
        target.write(str(self.whip))
        print self.whip

    def reading(self):
        self.whip = open('deed.txt', 'r').read()
        name = raw_input("> ")
        if name in self.whip:
            print self.whip[name]

p = Person()

while True:
    print "Type:
*read to read data base
*write to write to data base
*exit to exit"
    action = raw_input("
> ")
    if "write" in action:
        p.name = raw_input("Name?
> ")
        p.phone = raw_input("Phone Number?
> ")
        p.age = raw_input("Age?
> ")
        p.address = raw_input("Address?
>")
        p.writing()
    elif "read" in action:
        p.reading()
    elif "exit" in action:
        exit(0)

Answer 1

Have you tried the json module? JSON format is very similar to python dictionary. And it's human readable/writable:

>>> import json
>>> d = {"one":1, "two":2}
>>> json.dump(d, open("text.txt",'w'))

This code dumps to a text file

$ cat text.txt 
{"two": 2, "one": 1}

Also you can load from a JSON file:

>>> d2 = json.load(open("text.txt"))
>>> print d2
{u'two': 2, u'one': 1}