How can I capture mouseevents and keyevents using python in background on linux

Question

I'd like to make a python script that can run in the background but print text when a mouseevent or keyevent happens. Are there any libraries/builtin functionality to achieve this? Or any system commands I can call to get this info? Being root is no issue.

Reformatory

You have to read input events from the devices in /dev/input. – Elmaelmajian

cat /dev/input/mice mouse0 mouse1 event0-9 are just giving me blank, if I redirect output to another file it remains blank? It there something fundamentally different to it than reading from /dev/urandom ? – Reformatory

Answer 1

I guess, you might use python bindings for evdev: http://packages.python.org/evdev/index.html. In tutorial they give an example for keyboard, but it should be similar for mouse events:

>>> from evdev import InputDevice, categorize, ecodes
>>> from select import select
>>> dev = InputDevice('/dev/input/event1')

>>> print(dev)
device /dev/input/event1, name "Dell Dell USB Keyboard", phys "usb-0000:00:12.1-2/input0"

>>> while True:
...    r,w,x = select([dev], [], [])
...    for event in dev.read():
...        if event.type == ecodes.EV_KEY:
...            print(categorize(event))
... # hitting a and holding space
key event at 1337016188.396030, 30 (KEY_A), down
key event at 1337016188.492033, 30 (KEY_A), up
key event at 1337016189.772129, 57 (KEY_SPACE), down
key event at 1337016190.275396, 57 (KEY_SPACE), hold
key event at 1337016190.284160, 57 (KEY_SPACE), up

Sort

Answer 2

Take a look at pynput, for example:

from pynput.keyboard import Key, Listener
#defining function to print when key is pressed
def on_press(key):
  print('{0} pressed'.format(
    key))
#defining function to print when key is released
def on_release(key):
  print('{0} release'.format(
    key))
  if key == Key.esc:
    # Stop listener
    return False

# Collect events until released
with Listener(
    on_press=on_press,
    on_release=on_release) as listener:
    listener.join()

Moyna