How do I read keyboard events from file?

Question

I have read this question, which is similar and gets me most of the way.

The answer of the code isn't posted, but I believe I have followed the instructions and managed to get it working -- except after it's been opened. It works perfectly fine immediately after recording, however I want to save the data and read it again for later use: literally every time I run the program and I don't want to have to re-record it every time.

import keyboard
import threading
from keyboard import KeyboardEvent
import time
import json


def record(file='record.txt'):    
    f = open(file, 'w+')

    keyboard_events = []
    keyboard.start_recording()
    starttime = time.time()

    keyboard.wait('esc')
    keyboard_events = keyboard.stop_recording()


    print(starttime, file=f)

    for kevent in range(0, len(keyboard_events)):
        print(keyboard_events[kevent].to_json(), file = f)
    f.close()

def play(file="record.txt", speed = 1):
    f = open(file, 'r')
    
    lines = f.readlines()
    f.close()

    keyboard_events = []
    for index in range(1,len(lines)):
        keyboard_events.append(keyboard.KeyboardEvent(**json.loads(lines[index])))

    starttime = float(lines[0])
    keyboard_time_interval = keyboard_events[0].time - starttime
    keyboard_time_interval /= speed

    k_thread = threading.Thread(target = lambda : time.sleep(keyboard_time_interval) == keyboard.play(keyboard_events, speed_factor=speed) )
    k_thread.start()
    k_thread.join()

I am not especially new to coding, or the Python language, but this problem perplexes me. I've tested all the variables and none of them are being sustained outside of the record function.
(I don't fully understand lambda, Threading or **json.loads, but I don't think that's a problem.)

What's going on here?

For extra bonus points, if this is possible to do asynchronously, that'd be amazing. One problem at a time, though.

Answer 1

Just in case anyone else ever has the same problem as me, just tag this at the start of your code. No idea why it works, but it does.

keyboard.start_recording()
temp = keyboard.stop_recording()

You can forget about the temp variable immediately.