Listing accessible event devices

>>> import evdev

>>> devices = [evdev.InputDevice(path) for path in evdev.list_devices()]
>>> for device in devices:
...    print(device.path, device.name, device.phys)
/dev/input/event1    USB Keyboard        usb-0000:00:12.1-2/input0
/dev/input/event0    USB Optical Mouse   usb-0000:00:12.0-2/input0

Note

If you do not see any devices, ensure that your user is in the correct group (typically input) to have read/write access.

Reading events from a device

>>> import evdev

>>> device = evdev.InputDevice('/dev/input/event1')
>>> print(device)
device /dev/input/event1, name "USB Keyboard", phys "usb-0000:00:12.1-2/input0"

>>> for event in device.read_loop():
...     if event.type == evdev.ecodes.EV_KEY:
...         print(evdev.categorize(event))
... # pressing 'a' and holding 'space'
key event at 1337016188.396030, 30 (KEY_A), down
key event at 1337016188.492033, 30 (KEY_A), up
key event at 1337016189.772129, 57 (KEY_SPACE), down
key event at 1337016190.275396, 57 (KEY_SPACE), hold
key event at 1337016190.284160, 57 (KEY_SPACE), up

Accessing event codes

The evdev.ecodes module provides reverse and forward mappings between the names and values of the event subsystem constants.

>>> from evdev import ecodes

>>> ecodes.KEY_A
... 30
>>> ecodes.ecodes['KEY_A']
... 30
>>> ecodes.KEY[30]
... 'KEY_A'
>>> ecodes.bytype[ecodes.EV_KEY][30]
... 'KEY_A'

# A single value may correspond to multiple event codes.
>>> ecodes.KEY[152]
... ['KEY_COFFEE', 'KEY_SCREENLOCK']

Listing and monitoring input devices

The python-evdev package also comes with a small command-line program for listing and monitoring input devices: