pynput not letting tkinter make window

Question

I have pynput reading keypresses if the Esc key has been pressed, and tkinter showing them in a window. Both work fine, but the moment I put them into one code, nothing happens. Here is my code:

import tkinter as tk
from pynput import keyboard

listen = False

def onpress(key):
    global listen
    if str(key) == 'Key.esc':
        listen = not listen
    if listen:
        if str(key) == 'Key.1':
            labelval.set(labelval.get()+'1')
            print('1')

win = tk.Tk()
labelval = tk.StringVar()
lab = tk.Label(win, textvariable=entryval)
lab.grid(column=0,row=0)

with keyboard.Listener(
    on_press = onpress) as listener:
    listener.join()

Nothing happens when I run it, the tk window doesn't show up, and the 1 doesn't get printed to the screen. Any suggestions? When I take out the listener.join(), everything works fine, but then it can't keylog

Answer 1

You have to run code between with and join() - and use mainloop() to show tkinter window

with keyboard.Listener(on_press=onpress) as listener:

    win = tk.Tk()
    labelval = tk.StringVar()
    lab = tk.Label(win, textvariable=labelval)
    lab.grid(column=0,row=0)
    win.mainloop()

    listener.join()

or at least mainloop()

win = tk.Tk()
labelval = tk.StringVar()
lab = tk.Label(win, textvariable=labelval)
lab.grid(column=0,row=0)

with keyboard.Listener(on_press=onpress) as listener:

    win.mainloop()

    listener.join()

You can write it also without with()

listener = keyboard.Listener(on_press=onpress)
listener.start()

win = tk.Tk()
labelval = tk.StringVar()
lab = tk.Label(win, textvariable=labelval)
lab.grid(column=0,row=0)
win.mainloop()

listener.join()

---

BTW: you created labelval but you used textvariable=entryval

On Linux I had to use different method to recognize 1

import tkinter as tk
from pynput import keyboard

listen = False

def onpress(key):
    global listen

    #if key == keyboard.Key.esc:
    if str(key) == 'Key.esc':
        listen = not listen

    if listen:
        if hasattr(key, 'char') and key.char == '1':
            labelval.set(labelval.get()+'1')
            print('1!')

win = tk.Tk()
labelval = tk.StringVar()
lab = tk.Label(win, textvariable=labelval)
lab.grid(column=0,row=0)

with keyboard.Listener(on_press=onpress) as listener:

    win.mainloop()

    listener.join()