pygame.event

Pygame handles all its event messaging through an event queue. The routines in this module help you manage that event queue. The input queue is heavily dependent on the pygame.display module. If the display has not been initialized and a video mode not set, the event queue may not work properly. The event subsystem should be called from the main thread. If you want to post events into the queue from other threads, please use the pygame.fastevent module.

The event queue has an upper limit on the number of events it can hold (128 for standard SDL 1.2). When the queue becomes full new events are quietly dropped. To prevent lost events, especially input events which signal a quit command, your program must handle events every frame (with pygame.event.get(), pygame.event.pump(), pygame.event.wait(), pygame.event.peek() or pygame.event.clear()) and process them. Not handling events may cause your system to decide your program has locked up. To speed up queue processing use pygame.event.set_blocked() to limit which events get queued.

To get the state of various input devices, you can forego the event queue and access the input devices directly with their appropriate modules: pygame.mouse, pygame.key, and pygame.joystick. If you use this method, remember that pygame requires some form of communication with the system window manager and other parts of the platform. To keep pygame in sync with the system, you will need to call pygame.event.pump() to keep everything current. Usually, this should be called once per game loop. Note: Joysticks will not send any events until the device has been initialized.

The event queue contains pygame.event.EventType event objects. There are a variety of ways to access the queued events, from simply checking for the existence of events, to grabbing them directly off the stack. The event queue also offers some simple filtering which can slightly help performance by blocking certain event types from the queue. Use pygame.event.set_allowed() and pygame.event.set_blocked() to change this filtering. By default, all event types can be placed on the queue.

All pygame.event.EventType instances contain an event type identifier and attributes specific to that event type. The event type identifier is accessible as the pygame.event.EventType.type property. Any of the event specific attributes can be accessed through the pygame.event.EventType.__dict__ attribute or directly as an attribute of the event object (as member lookups are passed through to the object's dictionary values). The event object has no method functions. Users can create their own new events with the pygame.event.Event() function.

The event type identifier is in between the values of NOEVENT and NUMEVENTS. User defined events should have a value in the inclusive range of USEREVENT to NUMEVENTS - 1. It is recommended all user events follow this system.

Events support equality and inequality comparisons. Two events are equal if they are the same type and have identical attribute values.

While debugging and experimenting, you can print an event object for a quick display of its type and members. The function pygame.event.event_name() can be used to get a string representing the name of the event type.

Events that come from the system will have a guaranteed set of member attributes based on the type. The following is a list event types with their specific attributes.

QUIT              none
ACTIVEEVENT       gain, state
KEYDOWN           key, mod, unicode, scancode
KEYUP             key, mod
MOUSEMOTION       pos, rel, buttons
MOUSEBUTTONUP     pos, button
MOUSEBUTTONDOWN   pos, button
JOYAXISMOTION     joy (deprecated), instance_id, axis, value
JOYBALLMOTION     joy (deprecated), instance_id, ball, rel
JOYHATMOTION      joy (deprecated), instance_id, hat, value
JOYBUTTONUP       joy (deprecated), instance_id, button
JOYBUTTONDOWN     joy (deprecated), instance_id, button
VIDEORESIZE       size, w, h
VIDEOEXPOSE       none
USEREVENT         code

You can also find a list of constants for keyboard keys here.

On MacOSX when a file is opened using a pygame application, a USEREVENT with its code attribute set to pygame.USEREVENT_DROPFILE is generated. There is an additional attribute called filename where the name of the file being accessed is stored.

USEREVENT         code=pygame.USEREVENT_DROPFILE, filename

When compiled with SDL2, pygame has these additional events and their attributes.

AUDIODEVICEADDED   which, iscapture
AUDIODEVICEREMOVED which, iscapture
FINGERMOTION       touch_id, finger_id, x, y, dx, dy
FINGERDOWN         touch_id, finger_id, x, y, dx, dy
FINGERUP           touch_id, finger_id, x, y, dx, dy
MOUSEWHEEL         which, flipped, x, y
MULTIGESTURE       touch_id, x, y, pinched, rotated, num_fingers
TEXTEDITING        text, start, length
TEXTINPUT          text
WINDOWEVENT        event

pygame can recognize text or files dropped in its window. If a file is dropped, file will be its path. The DROPTEXT event is only supported on X11.

DROPBEGIN
DROPCOMPLETE
DROPFILE        file
DROPTEXT        text

Events reserved for pygame.midi use.

MIDIIN
MIDIOUT

SDL2 supports controller hotplugging:

CONTROLLERDEVICEADDED    device_index
JOYDEVICEADDED           device_index
CONTROLLERDEVICEREMOVED  instance_id
JOYDEVICEREMOVED         instance_id
CONTROLLERDEVICEREMAPPED instance_id

Also in this version, instance_id attributes were added to joystick events, and the joy attribute was deprecated.

pygame.event.pump()

internally process pygame event handlers

pump() -> None

For each frame of your game, you will need to make some sort of call to the event queue. This ensures your program can internally interact with the rest of the operating system. If you are not using other event functions in your game, you should call pygame.event.pump() to allow pygame to handle internal actions.

This function is not necessary if your program is consistently processing events on the queue through the other pygame.event functions.

There are important things that must be dealt with internally in the event queue. The main window may need to be repainted or respond to the system. If you fail to make a call to the event queue for too long, the system may decide your program has locked up.

Caution

This function should only be called in the thread that initialized pygame.display.

pygame.event.get()

get events from the queue

get(eventtype=None) -> Eventlist

get(eventtype=None, pump=True) -> Eventlist

This will get all the messages and remove them from the queue. If a type or sequence of types is given only those messages will be removed from the queue.

If you are only taking specific events from the queue, be aware that the queue could eventually fill up with the events you are not interested.

If pump is True (the default), then pygame.event.pump() will be called.

Changed in pygame 1.9.5: Added pump argument

pygame.event.poll()

get a single event from the queue

poll() -> EventType instance

Returns a single event from the queue. If the event queue is empty an event of type pygame.NOEVENT will be returned immediately. The returned event is removed from the queue.

Caution

This function should only be called in the thread that initialized pygame.display.

pygame.event.wait()

wait for a single event from the queue

wait() -> EventType instance

wait(timeout) -> EventType instance

Returns a single event from the queue. If the queue is empty this function will wait until one is created. From pygame 2.0.0, if a timeout argument is given, the function will return an event of type pygame.NOEVENT if no events enter the queue in timeout milliseconds. The event is removed from the queue once it has been returned. While the program is waiting it will sleep in an idle state. This is important for programs that want to share the system with other applications.

Changed in pygame 2.0.0.dev13: Added timeout argument

Caution

This function should only be called in the thread that initialized pygame.display.

pygame.event.peek()

test if event types are waiting on the queue

peek(eventtype=None) -> bool

peek(eventtype=None, pump=True) -> bool

Returns True if there are any events of the given type waiting on the queue. If a sequence of event types is passed, this will return True if any of those events are on the queue.

If pump is True (the default), then pygame.event.pump() will be called.

Changed in pygame 1.9.5: Added pump argument

pygame.event.clear()

remove all events from the queue

clear(eventtype=None) -> None

clear(eventtype=None, pump=True) -> None

Removes all events from the queue. If eventtype is given, removes the given event or sequence of events. This has the same effect as pygame.event.get() except None is returned. It can be slightly more efficient when clearing a full event queue.

If pump is True (the default), then pygame.event.pump() will be called.

Changed in pygame 1.9.5: Added pump argument

pygame.event.event_name()

get the string name from an event id

event_name(type) -> string

Returns a string representing the name (in CapWords style) of the given event type.

"UserEvent" is returned for all values in the user event id range. "Unknown" is returned when the event type does not exist.

pygame.event.set_blocked()

control which events are allowed on the queue

set_blocked(type) -> None

set_blocked(typelist) -> None

set_blocked(None) -> None

The given event types are not allowed to appear on the event queue. By default all events can be placed on the queue. It is safe to disable an event type multiple times.

If None is passed as the argument, ALL of the event types are blocked from being placed on the queue.

pygame.event.set_allowed()

control which events are allowed on the queue

set_allowed(type) -> None

set_allowed(typelist) -> None

set_allowed(None) -> None

The given event types are allowed to appear on the event queue. By default, all event types can be placed on the queue. It is safe to enable an event type multiple times.

If None is passed as the argument, ALL of the event types are allowed to be placed on the queue.

pygame.event.get_blocked()

test if a type of event is blocked from the queue

get_blocked(type) -> bool

get_blocked(typelist) -> bool

Returns True if the given event type is blocked from the queue. If a sequence of event types is passed, this will return True if any of those event types are blocked.

pygame.event.set_grab()

control the sharing of input devices with other applications

set_grab(bool) -> None

When your program runs in a windowed environment, it will share the mouse and keyboard devices with other applications that have focus. If your program sets the event grab to True, it will lock all input into your program.

It is best to not always grab the input, since it prevents the user from doing other things on their system.

pygame.event.get_grab()

test if the program is sharing input devices

get_grab() -> bool

Returns True when the input events are grabbed for this application.

pygame.event.post()

place a new event on the queue

post(Event) -> None

Places the given event at the end of the event queue.

This is usually used for placing pygame.USEREVENT events on the queue. Although any type of event can be placed, if using the system event types your program should be sure to create the standard attributes with appropriate values.

If the event queue is full a pygame.error is raised.

Caution: In pygame 2.0, calling this function with event types defined by pygame (such as pygame.KEYDOWN) may put events into the SDL2 event queue. In this case, an error may be raised if standard attributes of that event are missing or have incompatible values, and unexpected properties may be silently omitted. In order to avoid this behaviour, custom event properties should be used with custom event types. This behaviour is not guaranteed.

pygame.event.custom_type()

make custom user event type

custom_type() -> int

Reserves a pygame.USEREVENT for a custom use.

If too many events are made a pygame.error is raised.

New in pygame 2.0.0.dev3.

pygame.event.Event()

create a new event object

Event(type, dict) -> EventType instance

Event(type, **attributes) -> EventType instance

Creates a new event with the given type and attributes. The attributes can come from a dictionary argument with string keys or from keyword arguments.

pygame.event.EventType

pygame object for representing events

A pygame object that represents an event. User event instances are created with an pygame.event.Event() function call. The EventType type is not directly callable. EventType instances support attribute assignment and deletion.

type

event type identifier.

type -> int

Read-only. The event type identifier. For user created event objects, this is the type argument passed to pygame.event.Event().

For example, some predefined event identifiers are QUIT and MOUSEMOTION.

__dict__

event attribute dictionary

__dict__ -> dict

Read-only. The event type specific attributes of an event. The dict attribute is a synonym for backward compatibility.

For example, the attributes of a KEYDOWN event would be unicode, key, and mod

New in pygame 1.9.2: Mutable attributes.