How to get keyboard input in PyGame ? (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 8 Jun, 2022

While using pygame module of Python, we sometimes need to use the keyboard input for various operations such as moving a character in a certain direction. To achieve this, we have to see all the events happening. Pygame keeps track of events that occur, which we can see with the events.get() function. In this article, we are going to discuss how we can get and use various keyboard inputs in pygame.

Detecting if a key is pressed:

Whenever a key is pressed or released, pygame.event() queue methods pygame.KEYDOWN and pygame.KEYUP events respectively.

For example, if we want to detect if a key was pressed, we will track if any event of pygame.KEYDOWN occurred or not and, accordingly, we will get to know if any key was pressed or not. The code for detecting if any key was pressed or not can be written as:

Python `

importing pygame module

import pygame

importing sys module

import sys

initialising pygame

pygame.init()

creating display

display = pygame.display.set_mode((300, 300))

creating a running loop

while True:

# creating a loop to check events that
# are occurring
for event in pygame.event.get():
    if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
        pygame.quit()
        sys.exit()
    
    # checking if keydown event happened or not
    if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
      
        # if keydown event happened
        # than printing a string to output
        print("A key has been pressed")

`

Output:

After running this code, it is seen that whenever a key has pressed a string "A key has been pressed" is printed on the terminal

Detecting which key was pressed:

To know which key was pressed, we have to check the event.key variable corresponds to which pygame keys. For example, the pygame key for the letter "A" is "K_a" then we will compare event.Key with K a and if it comes to be same that means the key "A" was pressed.

The various keyboard key and corresponding pygame keys are:

pygamekey Description
K_BACKSPACE backspace
K_TAB tab
K_CLEAR clear
K_RETURN return
K_PAUSE pause
K_ESCAPE escape
K_SPACE space
K_EXCLAIM exclaim
K_HASH hash
K_QUOTEDBL quotedbl
K_DOLLAR dollar
K_AMPERSAND ampersand
K_QUOTE quote
K_LEFTPAREN left parenthesis
K_RIGHTPAREN right parenthesis
K_ASTERISK asterisk
K_PLUS plus sign
K_COMMA comma
K_MINUS minus sign
K_PERIOD period
K_SLASH forward slash
K_0 0
K_1 1
K_2 2
K_3 3
K_4 4
K_5 5
K_6 6
K_7 7
K_8 8
K_9 9
K_COLON colon
K_SEMICOLON semicolon
K_LESS less-than sign
K_EQUALS equals sign
K_GREATER greater-than sign
K_QUESTION question mark
K_AT at
K_LEFTBRACKET left bracket
K_BACKSLASH backslash
K_RIGHTBRACKET right bracket
K_CARET caret
K_UNDERSCORE underscore
K_BACKQUOTE grave
K_a,b,c.......z A to Z Alphabet
K_DELETE delete
K_KP0, K_KP1, K_KP2....K_KP9 keypad 0 to 9
K_KP_PERIOD keypad period
K_KP_DIVIDE keypad divide
K_KP_MULTIPLY keypad multiply
K_KP_MINUS keypad minus
K_KP_PLUS keypad plus
K_KP_ENTER keypad enter
K_KP_EQUALS keypad equals
K_UP up arrow
K_DOWN down arrow
K_RIGHT right arrow
K_LEFT Left arrow
K_INSERT Insert
K_HOME Home
K_END End
K_PAGEUP Page Up
K_PAGEDOWN Page Down
K_F1, K_F2, K_F3......K_F15 F1 to F15
K_NUMLOCK Numlock
K_CAPSLOCK Capsloack
K_SCROLLOCK Scrollock
K_RSHIFT Right shift
K_LSHIFT Left shift
K_RCTRL right control
K_LCTRL Left control
K_RALT Right alt
K_LALT Left alt
K_RMETA right meta
K_LMETA left meta
K_LSUPER left Windows key
K_RSUPER right Windows key
K_MODE mode shift
K_HELP Help
K_PRINT Print Screen
K_SYSREQ sysrq
K_BREAK Break
K_MENU Menu
K_POWER Power
K_EURO Euro

For example, let's create a code to check if key "A" or "J" or "P" or "M" was pressed or not. The code for checking will be:

Python `

importing pygame module

import pygame

importing sys module

import sys

initialising pygame

pygame.init()

creating display

display = pygame.display.set_mode((300, 300))

creating a running loop

while True:

# creating a loop to check events that 
# are occurring
for event in pygame.event.get():
    if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
        pygame.quit()
        sys.exit()
    
    # checking if keydown event happened or not
    if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
          
        # checking if key "A" was pressed
        if event.key == pygame.K_a:
            print("Key A has been pressed")
          
        # checking if key "J" was pressed
        if event.key == pygame.K_j:
            print("Key J has been pressed")
          
        # checking if key "P" was pressed
        if event.key == pygame.K_p:
            print("Key P has been pressed")
        
        # checking if key "M" was pressed
        if event.key == pygame.K_m:
            print("Key M has been pressed")

`

Output:

When we run this code and press the given keys the corresponding strings will be printed on the terminal.