How to set time limit on raw_input

Question

in python, is there a way to, while waiting for a user input, count time so that after, say 30 seconds, the raw_input() function is automatically skipped?

Answer 1

under linux one could use curses and getch function, its non blocking. see getch()

https://docs.python.org/2/library/curses.html

function that waits for keyboard input for x seconds (you have to initialize a curses window (win1) first!

import time

def tastaturabfrage():

    inittime = int(time.time()) # time now
    waitingtime = 2.00          # time to wait in seconds

    while inittime+waitingtime>int(time.time()):

        key = win1.getch()      #check if keyboard entry or screen resize

        if key == curses.KEY_RESIZE:
            empty()
            resize()
            key=0
        if key == 118:
            p(4,'KEY V Pressed')
            yourfunction();
        if key == 107:
            p(4,'KEY K Pressed')
            yourfunction();
        if key == 99:
            p(4,'KEY c Pressed')
            yourfunction();
        if key == 120:
            p(4,'KEY x Pressed')
            yourfunction();

        else:
            yourfunction

        key=0

Answer 2

from threading import Timer


def input_with_timeout(x):    

def time_up():
    answer= None
    print('time up...')

t = Timer(x,time_up) # x is amount of time in seconds
t.start()
try:
    answer = input("enter answer : ")
except Exception:
    print('pass\n')
    answer = None

if answer != True:   # it means if variable have somthing 
    t.cancel()       # time_up will not execute(so, no skip)

input_with_timeout(5) # try this for five seconds

As it is self defined... run it in command line prompt , I hope you will get the answer read this python doc you will be crystal clear what just happened in this code!!

Answer 3

The signal.alarm function, on which @jer's recommended solution is based, is unfortunately Unix-only. If you need a cross-platform or Windows-specific solution, you can base it on threading.Timer instead, using thread.interrupt_main to send a KeyboardInterrupt to the main thread from the timer thread. I.e.:

import thread
import threading

def raw_input_with_timeout(prompt, timeout=30.0):
    print(prompt, end=' ')    
    timer = threading.Timer(timeout, thread.interrupt_main)
    astring = None
    try:
        timer.start()
        astring = input(prompt)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass
    timer.cancel()
    return astring

this will return None whether the 30 seconds time out or the user explicitly decides to hit control-C to give up on inputting anything, but it seems OK to treat the two cases in the same way (if you need to distinguish, you could use for the timer a function of your own that, before interrupting the main thread, records somewhere the fact that a timeout has happened, and in your handler for KeyboardInterrupt access that "somewhere" to discriminate which of the two cases occurred).

Edit: I could have sworn this was working but I must have been wrong -- the code above omits the obviously-needed timer.start(), and even with it I can't make it work any more. select.select would be the obvious other thing to try but it won't work on a "normal file" (including stdin) in Windows -- in Unix it works on all files, in Windows, only on sockets.

So I don't know how to do a cross-platform "raw input with timeout". A windows-specific one can be constructed with a tight loop polling msvcrt.kbhit, performing a msvcrt.getche (and checking if it's a return to indicate the output's done, in which case it breaks out of the loop, otherwise accumulates and keeps waiting) and checking the time to time out if needed. I cannot test because I have no Windows machine (they're all Macs and Linux ones), but here the untested code I would suggest:

import msvcrt
import time

def raw_input_with_timeout(prompt, timeout=30.0):
    print(prompt, end=' ')    
    finishat = time.time() + timeout
    result = []
    while True:
        if msvcrt.kbhit():
            result.append(msvcrt.getche())
            if result[-1] == '\r':   # or \n, whatever Win returns;-)
                return ''.join(result)
            time.sleep(0.1)          # just to yield to other processes/threads
        else:
            if time.time() > finishat:
                return None

The OP in a comment says he does not want to return None upon timeout, but what's the alternative? Raising an exception? Returning a different default value? Whatever alternative he wants he can clearly put it in place of my return None;-).

If you don't want to time out just because the user is typing slowly (as opposed to, not typing at all!-), you could recompute finishat after every successful character input.

Answer 4

I found a solution to this problem in a blog post. Here's the code from that blog post:

import signal

class AlarmException(Exception):
    pass

def alarmHandler(signum, frame):
    raise AlarmException

def nonBlockingRawInput(prompt='', timeout=20):
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, alarmHandler)
    signal.alarm(timeout)
    try:
        text = raw_input(prompt)
        signal.alarm(0)
        return text
    except AlarmException:
        print '\nPrompt timeout. Continuing...'
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, signal.SIG_IGN)
    return ''

Please note: this code will only work on *nix OSs.

Answer 5

A curses example which takes for a timed math test

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import curses
import curses.ascii
import time

#stdscr = curses.initscr() - Using curses.wrapper instead
def main(stdscr):
    hd = 100 #Timeout in tenths of a second
    answer = ''

    stdscr.addstr('5+3=') #Your prompt text

    s = time.time() #Timing function to show that solution is working properly

    while True:
        #curses.echo(False)
        curses.halfdelay(hd)
        start = time.time()
        c = stdscr.getch()
        if c == curses.ascii.NL: #Enter Press
            break
        elif c == -1: #Return on timer complete
            break
        elif c == curses.ascii.DEL: #Backspace key for corrections. Could add additional hooks for cursor movement
            answer = answer[:-1]
            y, x = curses.getsyx()
            stdscr.delch(y, x-1)
        elif curses.ascii.isdigit(c): #Filter because I only wanted digits accepted
            answer += chr(c)
            stdscr.addstr(chr(c))
        hd -= int((time.time() - start) * 10) #Sets the new time on getch based on the time already used

    stdscr.addstr('\n')

    stdscr.addstr('Elapsed Time: %i\n'%(time.time() - s))
    stdscr.addstr('This is the answer: %s\n'%answer)
    #stdscr.refresh() ##implied with the call to getch
    stdscr.addstr('Press any key to exit...')
curses.wrapper(main)

Answer 6

The input() function is designed to wait for the user to enter something (at least the [Enter] key).

If you are not dead set to use input(), below is a much lighter solution using tkinter. In tkinter, dialog boxes (and any widget) can be destroyed after a given time.

Here is an example :

import tkinter as tk

def W_Input (label='Input dialog box', timeout=5000):
    w = tk.Tk()
    w.title(label)
    W_Input.data=''
    wFrame = tk.Frame(w, background="light yellow", padx=20, pady=20)
    wFrame.pack()
    wEntryBox = tk.Entry(wFrame, background="white", width=100)
    wEntryBox.focus_force()
    wEntryBox.pack()

    def fin():
        W_Input.data = str(wEntryBox.get())
        w.destroy()
    wSubmitButton = tk.Button(w, text='OK', command=fin, default='active')
    wSubmitButton.pack()

# --- optionnal extra code in order to have a stroke on "Return" equivalent to a mouse click on the OK button
    def fin_R(event):  fin()
    w.bind("<Return>", fin_R)
# --- END extra code --- 

    w.after(timeout, w.destroy) # This is the KEY INSTRUCTION that destroys the dialog box after the given timeout in millisecondsd
    w.mainloop()

W_Input() # can be called with 2 parameter, the window title (string), and the timeout duration in miliseconds

if W_Input.data : print('\nYou entered this : ', W_Input.data, end=2*'\n')

else : print('\nNothing was entered \n')