pygame detect which key is pressed - string

Question

I'm working on a scoreboard in a game I am creating and I know how to check if a key is pressed, but is there a way to check WHICH key is pressed, make a varibale that key and then add it to a string?
EDIT: Ok, incase I was unclear: I know that I can check if buttons like h or t can be pressed, but I want a way to just instantly press a button and add that to a string, and I don't want to build an event function for every letter in the alphabet.

Answer 1

if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN :
print(event.key)
You can transform the given number into ascii with :
pygame.key.name(event.key)

Answer 2

If you have registered a callback to detect when a key has been pressed, UNQUESTIONABLY the identity of the key will be included in the structure passed to the callback's service routine.
Whether that offers the "keyboard code" as well as the plain-Jane ASCII value of the key I cannot tell you.

Answer 3

If you want simple textinput (for example if the user should enter their name for the highscore), take a look at EzText library.
Generally speaking, you can check which key was pressed in two ways.
If you use the event queue, you can check the event.key against the pygame key codes:
import pygame
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((500, 500))
done = False
while not done:
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
done = True
if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE:
print("spacebar was pressed")
if event.key == pygame.K_q:
done = True
pygame.quit()
All keycodes are listed in the documentation. This will fire one event for every keypress, regardless of how long a single key is being held down.
Alternatively, you can use state checking:
import pygame
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((500, 500))
done = False
while not done:
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
done = True
state = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if state[pygame.K_SPACE]:
print("spacebar was pressed")
if state[pygame.K_q]:
done = True
pygame.quit()
Notice that this will fire many events if the key is being held down for longer. It may also miss key presses if the key is being pressed and released at a time when your program is busy doing something other than checking for key presses.

Answer 4

A bit late, but I think this is it:
import pygame
pygame.init()
# set screen size
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((100, 100))
# set loop flag
done = False
while not done:
# check events
for event in pygame.event.get():
# end if X was pressed
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
done = True
# check if event was a key being pressed down
if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
# end if Esc was pressed
if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
done = True
# unicode returns the char
print(event.scancode, event.key, event.unicode)
# be IDLE friendly
pygame.quit()

Answer 5

What you need is this:
if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
print(event.key, event.unicode)
event.key show the code of an character that are pressed
event.unicode show the character that are preseed
Result would be this:
event.key: 97, event.unicode: a
event.key: 98, event.unicode: b
event.key: 99, event.unicode: c
event.key: 100, event.unicode: d
event.key: 101, event.unicode: e
event.key: 102, event.unicode: f