How do I copy an instance that has non-pickleable objects stored within it?

Question

I have objects within my instance that are not pickleable. However, I would like to be able to save the instance as the program runs in case something happens. This way I can easily restart the program.

My thought was:

1. Create copy of instance as new_instance
2. Re-write all non-pickleable objects in new_instance to None
3. Pickle new_instance
4. Repeat at a specified time interval

However, copy() and deepcopy() do not work. copy() just assigns the reference to the original object for some reason & Deepcopy() gives me the same error that the objects in my instance aren't pickleable.

Is there another option / better method that I should be using? Is there a way to ignore certain object types when pickling so I don't need to create a copy, rewrite, and pickle?

Answer 1

I ended up writing the logic myself based on juanpa.arrivillaga's input.

I created an empty copy within the init(self) of the class. Then, later updated using a function like below:

def save_copy(self):
     for i, j in self.__dict__.items():
          # Ignore nonpickeable items
          if(type(i) == 'nonpickeable'):
              pass
          else:
              # Set copy dictionary to instance dictionary
              # if pickeable
              self._copy.__dict__[i] = j