appul / HotiKeys

Hotkeys using low level keyboard and mouse events for Windows.

HotiKeys, simple low level key events.

HotiKeys is a library that provides keyboard and mouse events by using low level Windows hooks.

HotiKeys has no dependancies other than Python 3.5+ itself.

Usage

Hotkey is HotiKey's main class and takes the following arguments:

• handler: a callable (function/method) that may take a single argument for the event args
• key(optional): an Key or virtual key code (int)
• modifiers(optional): an iterable of keys
• events(optional): an iterable containing KeyState, EventId or an int that represents the identifier of the event message

Hotkey has the following class attributes for configuration;

• keyboard (bool, default: True): Hooks keyboard events if True
• mouse (bool, default: True): Hooks mouse events if True
• no_repeat (bool, default: True): Blocks subsequent key down events when a key is being hold if True
• purge_delay (float, default: 10.000): The time in seconds until pressed keys are removed (in case they're not correctly removed during key up events)
• threaded (bool, default: True): Whether the hooks should be registered in new threads to prevent blocking the current thread.

(Note: keyboard, mouse and threaded have to be set before the hooks are placed, which happens when the first instance of the class is made.)
(Note: these are class wide attributes and affect each instance of Hotkey. You can subclass and override these attributes if you wish to have separate configurations.)

Code Example

import time
from hotikeys import Hotkey, Key, KeyState, newhotkey

def handler(args):
    print(Key[args.vkey], args.event.state)

def on_ctrl_shift_a():
    print('Ctrl-Shift-A pressed!')
    

@newhotkey(Key.LButton)
def lmb_hotkey(args):
    print('Click, click! ({x}, {y}'.format(x=args.x, y=args.y))

Hotkey(handler, events=(KeyState.Down, KeyState.Up))
Hotkey(on_ctrl_shift_a, Key.A, (Key.LControl, Key.LShift))
time.sleep(5)  # Keep running for 5 seconds to prevent immediate exit

Another example can be found in tests/manual_test.py, which includes an example of a concurrent loop.

Documentation

Currently M.I.A. Sadly enough the docs were eaten by a vicious bulldog on their journey here. Hopefully a replacement will find their way here... soon™.