Is there any way to detect key press in Python?

June 17, 2022

I am wanting to make a program with different responses when you press a key. Is there any way that you can detect a key press in Python?

The program is like when you press 0, it will say you pressed 0 and when you pressed ctrl-c it will say that you interrupted the program, so on.

Can you do this in a while True: loop as well?

Also, I don’t want it to be like input and I am using Linux (I don’t want to have to use root).

>Solution :

Assuming you want a command line application
you should be able to do it with

import sys
import termios
import tty
custom_messages = {'a': 'some other message'}
custom_messages['b'] = 'what?';
stdin = sys.stdin.fileno()
tattr = termios.tcgetattr(stdin)
try:
    tty.setcbreak(stdin, termios.TCSANOW)
    while True:
        char = sys.stdin.read(1)
        print(custom_messages.get(char, 'You pressed ' + char))
except KeyboardInterrupt:
  print('You interrupted')
  sys.exit() ## ?
finally:
    termios.tcsetattr(stdin, termios.TCSANOW, tattr)

I based my answer on disabling buffering in stdin