How to create a python dictionary that will store the username and password for multiple accounts

Question

The problem I have right now is that for my dictionary that uses a key:value to store username:password is that every time I rerun the program, the current key:value is reset and the dictionary is set to empty again. The goal of my program is to have a person log in with a username and password and be able to store notes and passwords (I did this with python .txt files). Then the next person can come along, create an account and do the same. Here is my code (I have commented every line of code pertaining to my problem):

def userPass():
checkAccount = input("Do you have an account (Y or N)?")
if (checkAccount == 'N' or checkAccount == 'n'):
    userName = input("Please Set Your New Username: ")
    password = input("Please Set Your New Password: ")
//  if (userName in dictAcc):
        print("Username is taken")
        userPass()
    else:
//      dictAcc[userName] = password 
        print("Congratulations! You have succesfully created an account!")
        time.sleep(1.5)
        dataInput()
elif(checkAccount == 'Y' or checkAccount == 'y'):
    login()
else:
    print("Invalid answer, try again")
    userPass()


def login():
global userName
global password
global tries
loginUserName = input("Type in your Username: ")
loginPass = input("Type in your Password: ")
if (tries < 3):
//  for key in dictAcc:
//      if (loginUserName == key and loginPass == dictAcc[key]):
//          print("You have successfully logged in!")
            dataInput()
        else:
            print("Please try again")
            tries += 1
            login()
        if (tries >= 3):
            print("You have attempted to login too many times. Try again later.")
            time.sleep(300)
            login()

userPass()

Answer 1

As others have mentioned, you need to have your dictionary saved into a file and load it when you restart your program. I adjusted your code to work for me and created two functions, one to save the dictionary (savedict) and another to load it (loaddict). The except IOError part is just so that it creates a new file if it doesn't exist.

Note that in general, storing passwords in a text file is a very bad idea. You can clearly see the reason why if you try to open the "dictAcc.txt" file (it will have all passwords there).

import pickle
import time

def loaddict():
    try:
        with open("dictAcc.txt", "rb") as pkf:
            return pickle.load(pkf)
    except IOError:
        with open("dictAcc.txt", "w+") as pkf:
            pickle.dump(dict(), pkf)
            return dict()

def savedict(dictAcc):
    with open("dictAcc.txt", "wb") as pkf:
        pickle.dump(dictAcc, pkf)


def userPass():
    dictAcc = loaddict() #Load the dict
    checkAccount = raw_input("Do you have an account (Y or N)?")
    if (checkAccount == 'N' or checkAccount == 'n'):
        userName = raw_input("Please Set Your New Username: ")
        password = raw_input("Please Set Your New Password: ")
        if (userName in dictAcc):
            print("Username is taken")
            userPass()
        else:
            dictAcc[userName] = password 
            print("Congratulations! You have succesfully created an account!")
            savedict(dictAcc) #Save the dict
            time.sleep(1.5)
            # dataInput() Code ends
    elif(checkAccount == 'Y' or checkAccount == 'y'):
        login()
    else:
        print("Invalid answer, try again")
        userPass()


def login():
    global userName
    global password
    global tries
    loginUserName = raw_input("Type in your Username: ")
    loginPass = raw_input("Type in your Password: ")
    dictAcc = loaddict() #Load the dict
    if (tries < 3):
        for key in dictAcc:
            if (loginUserName == key and loginPass == dictAcc[key]):
                print("You have successfully logged in!")
                # dataInput() Code ends
            else:
                print("Please try again")
                tries += 1
                login()
            if (tries >= 3):
                print("You have attempted to login too many times. Try again later.")
                time.sleep(3)
                tries=1 #To restart the tries counter
                login()

global tries
tries=1
userPass()