How can I create a text input box with Pygame?

Question

I want to get some text input from the user in Python and display what they are typing in a text box, and when they press enter, it gets stored in a string.

I've looked everywhere, but I just can't find anything. I'm using Pygame.

Answer 1

You can define a rect as the area of the input box. If a pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN event occurs, use the colliderect method of the input_box rect to check if it collides with the event.pos and then activate it by setting a active variable to True.

If the box is active you can type something and Pygame will generate pygame.KEYDOWN events which have a unicode attribute that you can simply add to a string, e.g. text += event.unicode. If the user presses enter, you can do something with the text string (in the example I just print it) and reset it to ''.

import pygame as pg


def main():
    screen = pg.display.set_mode((640, 480))
    font = pg.font.Font(None, 32)
    clock = pg.time.Clock()
    input_box = pg.Rect(100, 100, 140, 32)
    color_inactive = pg.Color('lightskyblue3')
    color_active = pg.Color('dodgerblue2')
    color = color_inactive
    active = False
    text = ''
    done = False

    while not done:
        for event in pg.event.get():
            if event.type == pg.QUIT:
                done = True
            if event.type == pg.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
                # If the user clicked on the input_box rect.
                if input_box.collidepoint(event.pos):
                    # Toggle the active variable.
                    active = not active
                else:
                    active = False
                # Change the current color of the input box.
                color = color_active if active else color_inactive
            if event.type == pg.KEYDOWN:
                if active:
                    if event.key == pg.K_RETURN:
                        print(text)
                        text = ''
                    elif event.key == pg.K_BACKSPACE:
                        text = text[:-1]
                    else:
                        text += event.unicode

        screen.fill((30, 30, 30))
        # Render the current text.
        txt_surface = font.render(text, True, color)
        # Resize the box if the text is too long.
        width = max(200, txt_surface.get_width()+10)
        input_box.w = width
        # Blit the text.
        screen.blit(txt_surface, (input_box.x+5, input_box.y+5))
        # Blit the input_box rect.
        pg.draw.rect(screen, color, input_box, 2)

        pg.display.flip()
        clock.tick(30)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    pg.init()
    main()
    pg.quit()

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Here's an object-oriented variant that allows you to easily create multiple input boxes:

import pygame as pg


pg.init()
screen = pg.display.set_mode((640, 480))
COLOR_INACTIVE = pg.Color('lightskyblue3')
COLOR_ACTIVE = pg.Color('dodgerblue2')
FONT = pg.font.Font(None, 32)


class InputBox:

    def __init__(self, x, y, w, h, text=''):
        self.rect = pg.Rect(x, y, w, h)
        self.color = COLOR_INACTIVE
        self.text = text
        self.txt_surface = FONT.render(text, True, self.color)
        self.active = False

    def handle_event(self, event):
        if event.type == pg.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
            # If the user clicked on the input_box rect.
            if self.rect.collidepoint(event.pos):
                # Toggle the active variable.
                self.active = not self.active
            else:
                self.active = False
            # Change the current color of the input box.
            self.color = COLOR_ACTIVE if self.active else COLOR_INACTIVE
        if event.type == pg.KEYDOWN:
            if self.active:
                if event.key == pg.K_RETURN:
                    print(self.text)
                    self.text = ''
                elif event.key == pg.K_BACKSPACE:
                    self.text = self.text[:-1]
                else:
                    self.text += event.unicode
                # Re-render the text.
                self.txt_surface = FONT.render(self.text, True, self.color)

    def update(self):
        # Resize the box if the text is too long.
        width = max(200, self.txt_surface.get_width()+10)
        self.rect.w = width

    def draw(self, screen):
        # Blit the text.
        screen.blit(self.txt_surface, (self.rect.x+5, self.rect.y+5))
        # Blit the rect.
        pg.draw.rect(screen, self.color, self.rect, 2)



def main():
    clock = pg.time.Clock()
    input_box1 = InputBox(100, 100, 140, 32)
    input_box2 = InputBox(100, 300, 140, 32)
    input_boxes = [input_box1, input_box2]
    done = False

    while not done:
        for event in pg.event.get():
            if event.type == pg.QUIT:
                done = True
            for box in input_boxes:
                box.handle_event(event)

        for box in input_boxes:
            box.update()

        screen.fill((30, 30, 30))
        for box in input_boxes:
            box.draw(screen)

        pg.display.flip()
        clock.tick(30)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()
    pg.quit()

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There are also third party modules available like pygame_textinput.