Develop Reference

my program wont receive inputs while I'm on other tabs [duplicate]

I wrote a simple python script that gives control over the cursor to a joystick. My way to find out how this works is documented here. Now that works flawlessly but, as soon as I start the script to use the joystick, the mouse is useless, because my python routine sets the value back to its original, whenever a new joystick event comes in.
Thus I want my joystick events to be ignored as long as a key of the keyboard is pressed. I came across the pygame.key.get_pressed() method but this seems to work only, if the pygame window is in focus. I want this script running in background. Should I start using non-pygame events to listen to the keyboard or are there ways to keep track of the keyboard events analogue to the joystick events, which are recognized in background, via pygame?

I expect pygame sets up its own "sandbox" so that it's hard to detect input from outside its window. Your previous question indicates that you are also using the win32api module. We can use that to detect global key presses.
The correct way to detect key presses at the global scope is to set up a keyboard hook using SetWindowsHookEx. Unfortunately, win32api does not expose that method, so we'll have to use a less efficient method.
The GetKeyState method can be used to determine whether a key is down or up. You can continuously check the state of a key to see if the user has pressed or released it lately.
import win32api
import time
def keyWasUnPressed():
print "enabling joystick..."
#enable joystick here
def keyWasPressed():
print "disabling joystick..."
#disable joystick here
def isKeyPressed(key):
#"if the high-order bit is 1, the key is down; otherwise, it is up."
return (win32api.GetKeyState(key) & (1 << 7)) != 0
key = ord('A')
wasKeyPressedTheLastTimeWeChecked = False
while True:
keyIsPressed = isKeyPressed(key)
if keyIsPressed and not wasKeyPressedTheLastTimeWeChecked:
keyWasPressed()
if not keyIsPressed and wasKeyPressedTheLastTimeWeChecked:
keyWasUnPressed()
wasKeyPressedTheLastTimeWeChecked = keyIsPressed
time.sleep(0.01)
Warning: as with any "while True sleep and then check" loop, this method may use more CPU cycles than the equivalent "set a callback and wait" method. You can extend the length of the sleep period to ameliorate this, but the key detection will take longer. For example, if you sleep for a full second, it may take up to one second between when you press a key and when the joystick is disabled.

when your window gains or looses focus you get an ACTIVEEVENT. It's gain and state attributes tell you which state you've gained or lost. The easisest solution would probably be to catch this events in your main event loop and use them to keep track weather you have focus or not. Then you can just ignore joystick events if you don't have the focus.

pyautogui and pydirectinput not working properly on Halo 5?

I am trying to write a script in python that would take control of Halo 5 forge in order to automatically create and script an in-game script brain object and use the game's built-in scripting system to script the object to randomize the movement of 2 agents (will be added later) in order to procedurally generate a map, saving me time in doing tedious manual work on creating a method from scratch I have repeated many times in Halo 5 Forge.
Basically I am trying to create a class representing this script brain object in python and under the init method it is supposed to follow all of the steps in Forge to create a script brain object.
At first I tried pyautogui as it initially worked previously on Halo 5. But now it doesn't seem to work. It is a known issue that pyautogui doesn't input certain things properly on directX games and was suggested pydirectinput as an alternative.
So I did and while the mouse responds properly in the game and opens the object menu using the press() method, it doesn't actually seem to respond to leftClick() for some reason, only repositioning the mouse to the correct position but not actually clicking the object menu like I had hoped.
Here is the code:
import os
import pyautogui as pygui
import pydirectinput as pydi
import time
class forgeObjectRandomizer:
def __init__(self):
#CREATE THE SCRIPT BRAIN
time.sleep(5)
screenWidth, screenHeight = pydi.size()
pydi.moveTo(round(screenWidth / 2), round(screenHeight / 2))
time.sleep(1)
# pydi.leftClick(1749, 44)
pydi.press('o')
time.sleep(0.5)
pydi.leftClick(1554, 337) # --- Extras
time.sleep(0.5)
pydi.leftClick(1605, 266) # --- Scripting
time.sleep(0.5)
pydi.leftClick(1630, 236) # --- Script Brain
time.sleep(0.5)
pydi.press('p') # --- Properties
time.sleep(0.5)
pydi.mouseDown(1886, 231) # --- Scroll down
pydi.moveTo(1886, 453) # --- Scroll down
pydi.mouseUp()
brainRandomizer = forgeObjectRandomizer()

You can use to move mouse
import win32api,win32con
def click():
win32api.mouse_event(win32con.MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE, int(x), int(y), 15, 15)
for mouse click equivalent, but I only had problems with moving the mouse

This is kinda a blind shot since u said pyautogui was working fine before on halo 5...are you running the game as administrator? If so make sure that ur code does too, because i had same problem in a game named asda global

Psychopy in python : having two answers once when the key is pressed and the second when is released

I need to modify a script in psychopy. The thing I need is the subject to press and hold a buttom in the keyboard, but I'd like to have two responses: one when he/her presses it (and the windows with text has to change), and the second when he/her releases it (and the windows with text has to change again).
I am using event.getKeys function of psychopy, and then I'm using keyboard library.
after inizializing the window screen and the text and importing psychopy and the functions I need and keyboard library as key.
intro.draw()
win.flip() # reset the clock to record a response time and clear events
event.clearEvents('all')
event.globalKeys.clear() #to avoid problems with the keys you pressed before
intro_loop = True
while intro_loop:
intro_keys = kb.getKeys(["space"], waitRelease=True)
if key.is_pressed('space'):
intro.text = 'Hi, please follow these instructions :) '
intro.draw()
win.flip() # reset the clock to record a response time and clear events
if len(intro_keys):
win.close()
intro_loop = False
I did the same in another script (just to try) but instead of having a window text screen I printed two different things, and it worked. in this script, instead, it completely ignores the function "key.is_pressed".
do you have any ideas?

printing key presses to the screen instantly with python

I know this question is long but what I really want to know is in bold.
I would prefer to use python on Linux.
I'm trying to make a new keyboard layout kind of like devorak but the layout is set to either layout1 or layout2 depending on if you are holding a hot key or not (the hot key should probably be ctrl?)
e.g. press d -> "z" prints to the screen using key layout1
e.g. press ctrl d -> "x" prints to the screen using key layout2
My main problem (and question that needs answering) is the way characters need to print to the screen.
if someone presses the keys (in this order) "(a)(b)(c)(d)(ctrl+d)(shift+e=E)(f)(Enter)"
now lets say the output for these key presses should be "oijzxKb"
I don't want output to render with new lines:
o
i
j
z
x
K
b
I want the characters to appear instantly on the screen as each character is pressed (without waiting for them to press enter).
e.g.
press o
Screenshot1 o
press i
Screenshot2 oi
press j
Screenshot3 oij
.. etc
I assume I will need the following:
a way to read keypresses instantly
a way to print key presses instantly (to the terminal or a GUI or whatever is easiest initially, if it worked on any editor that would be cool!)
I could probably do this in PyGame (but then I probably wouldn't be able to cut and paste etc) and I'm guessing there should be an easier way.
I'm using a Logitech G110 keyboard, I may eventually want to use this as an alternative to my qwerty keyboard on all my applications across all my devices.
Thanks!
EDIT: SOLUTION:
Thanks to the first response,
using Getch from http://code.activestate.com/recipes/134892/
getch = _Getch()
word=""
while True:
c=getch.impl()
if c=="a":
word+="z"
elif ord(c)==127: #backspace
word=word[:-1]
else:
word+=c
print word
This will suffice for now thank you. Once I'm happy with refinement I'll look at doing something lower level, operating system specific without python.
One problem with getch however is that ctrl+a cant be distinguished between ctrl+A (e.g. if you hold ctrl and press keys, it can't tell the difference between upper and lower case)

If it's ok to depends on the X window system, you can use the python-xlib module or the xpyb module to access the X window system and use a XGrabKey call to grab the keyboard related events. Upon each KeyPress event you will be able to print the pressed key.
Now, if you really want to write a keymap, this is totally OS/window system dependent. If you use the X window system (Ubuntu does), you need to check the X documentation about how to write a new keymap. On Ubuntu, the current keymaps definition should be in /usr/share/X11/xkb. Take a look, and try to copy and edit one. You can use setxkbmap to change the current keymap then.

To modify the key mapping of your keyboard, you must use the tools provided by your OS. Most applications don't accept generated events for security reasons.
In your case, that would be xmodmap. Don't forget to create a backup of your current keymap using the -pke option because you will make a mistake - and then, your keyboard won't be working anymore.
If you also want your new keymap work on the console, have a look at the kbd package which changes the keyboard layout at the kernel level.

Which is the easiest way to simulate keyboard and mouse on Python?

I need to do some macros and I wanna know what is the most recommended way to do it.
So, I need to write somethings and click some places with it and I need to emulate the TAB key to.

I do automated testing stuff in Python. I tend to use the following:
http://www.tizmoi.net/watsup/intro.html
Edit: Link is dead, archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20100224025508/http://www.tizmoi.net/watsup/intro.html
http://www.mayukhbose.com/python/IEC/index.php
I do not always (almost never) simulate key presses and mouse movement. I usually use COM to set values of windows objects and call their .click() methods.
You can send keypress signals with this:
import win32com.client
shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
shell.SendKeys("^a") # CTRL+A may "select all" depending on which window's focused
shell.SendKeys("{DELETE}") # Delete selected text? Depends on context. :P
shell.SendKeys("{TAB}") #Press tab... to change focus or whatever
This is all in Windows. If you're in another environment, I have no clue.

Maybe you are looking for Sendkeys?
SendKeys is a Python module for
Windows that can send one or more
keystrokes or keystroke combinations
to the active window.
it seems it is windows only
Also you have pywinauto (copied from my SO answer)
pywinauto is a set of open-source
(LGPL) modules for using Python as a
GUI automation 'driver' for Windows NT
based Operating Systems (NT/W2K/XP).
and example from the web page
> from pywinauto import application
> app = application.Application.start("notepad.exe")
> app.notepad.TypeKeys("%FX")
> app.Notepad.MenuSelect("File->SaveAs")
> app.SaveAs.ComboBox5.Select("UTF-8")
> app.SaveAs.edit1.SetText("Example-utf8.txt")
> app.SaveAs.Save.Click()

pyautogui is a great package to send keys and automate several keyboard / mouse related tasks. Check out Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation and PyAutoGUI’s documentation.

You can use PyAutoGUI library for Python which works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Mouse
Here is a simple code to move the mouse to the middle of the screen:
import pyautogui
screenWidth, screenHeight = pyautogui.size()
pyautogui.moveTo(screenWidth / 2, screenHeight / 2)
Docs page: Mouse Control Functions.
Related question: Controlling mouse with Python.
Keyboard
Example:
pyautogui.typewrite('Hello world!') # prints out "Hello world!" instantly
pyautogui.typewrite('Hello world!', interval=0.25) # prints out "Hello world!" with a quarter second delay after each character
Docs page: Keyboard Control Functions.
More reading: Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation (Chapter 18 of e-book).
Related questions:
Python GUI automation library for simulating user interaction in apps.
Python simulate keydown.

Two other options are:
pynput - https://pypi.org/project/pynput/ - which is for Windows (tested), Linux and MacOS- docs are at https://pynput.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
PyDirectInput - https://pypi.org/project/PyDirectInput/ - which is for Windows only and can be used with (or without) PyAutoGUI
Warning - if you are wanting to use keyboard control for games, then pynput doesn't always work - e.g. it works for Valheim, but not for the Witcher 3 - which is where PyDirectInput will work instead. I also tested PyDirectInput and it works for Half life 2 (as a test of an older game).
Tip - You will likely need to reduce (don't remove for games) the delay between character typing - use pydirectinput.PAUSE = 0.05
As an example, here is a function that allows virtual keyboard typing - currently only tested on Windows:
from pynput import keyboard
try:
import pydirectinput
pydirectinput.PAUSE = 0.05
except ImportError as err:
pydirectinput = False
print("pydirectinput not found:")
def write_char(ch):
upper = ch.isupper()
if pydirectinput and pydirectinput.KEYBOARD_MAPPING.get(ch.lower(), False):
if upper:
pydirectinput.keyDown('shift')
print('^')
pydirectinput.write(ch.lower(), interval=0.0)
print(ch)
if upper:
pydirectinput.keyUp('shift')
else:
keyboard.Controller().type(ch)
This allows a string to be sent in, with upper case alphabetic characters handled through pydirectinput. When characters don't simply map, the function falls back to using pynput. Note that PyAutoGUI also can't handled some shifted characters - such as the £ symbol, etc.