How to get mouse clicks

Question

I'm programming a small game with Pygame and I'm not sure how to get mouse clicks. I've gotten a bit of it figured out, but honestly I'm not having the best of times.

Here's what I have:

import pygame

pygame.init()

def menu():
    title_font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace",64)
    button_font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace", 30)
    screen_size = (1280,950)
    screen = pygame.display.set_mode(screen_size)

    background = (255,255,255)
    screen.fill(background)
    play_button = pygame.Rect(250,600,200,100)
    quit_button = pygame.Rect(850,600,200,100)
    controls_button = pygame.Rect(550,600,200,100)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0,255,0), play_button)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,0,0), quit_button)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,229,0), controls_button)
    title = title_font.render("Fightastic!", 1, (0,0,0))
    screen.blit(title, (450,300))
    play_text = button_font.render("START",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(play_text, (310,635))
    quit_text = button_font.render("QUIT",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(quit_text, (910,635))
    controls_text = button_font.render("CONTROLS",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(controls_text, (580,635))
    buttons = [play_button, quit_button, controls_button]

    while True:

        events = pygame.event.get()
        for event in events:
            if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                exit()

        mouse_cursor = pygame.mouse.get_pos()
        mouse_pressed = pygame.mouse.get_pressed()

        option = 0
        for i in range(len(buttons)):
            if buttons[i].collidepoint( mouse_cursor):
                option = i+1

        if option == 1:
            print ("YO I GOT CLICKED")
        elif option == 2:
            print ("CLICKED MY DUDE")
        elif option == 3:
            quit()

    pygame.display.update()

menu()

The game's menu is the only part that will require clicks so that's all I've shown.

Thanks!

Possible duplicate of [Pygame mouse clicking detection](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10990137/pygame-mouse-clicking-detection) — Alex, Jan 08 '18 at 19:41
Is the `pygame.display.update()` line indented on your version of the code? It should be indented to be included inside the `while True;` loop. — Micheal O'Dwyer, Jan 08 '18 at 20:15
I concur, I've made that mistake on assignments before. As for getting the pointer's attributes, I've always used [this guy's method](https://stackoverflow.com/a/10992212/706853). It's worked decently well — Alex, Jan 09 '18 at 05:00
you already have `pygame.mouse.get_pressed()` - so use it to check which button was clicked. Or you can use `event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN` and then you have `event.pos` and `event.button` — furas, Jan 09 '18 at 11:43

furas · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-09T15:17:56.663

You already have pygame.mouse.get_pressed() so use it to check which button was clicked.

    option = 0

    if mouse_pressed[0]: # check if left button was clicked
        for i, but in enumerate(buttons, 1): # get button and its number
            if but.collidepoint(mouse_cursor): # check collision
                option = i # remember button number
                break      # no need to check other buttons

But using pygame.mouse.get_pressed() makes one problem - it returns True all the time you hold mouse button pressed (so it looks like many clicks in every second) so if you change button on screen and new button will be in the same place then it will automatically click in new button. Better use event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN which create only one click.

while True:

    option = 0

    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            exit()
        if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
            for i, but in enumerate(buttons, 1):
                if but.collidepoint(event.pos):
                    option = i
                    break # no need to check other buttons

    if option == 1:
        print ("YO I GOT CLICKED")
    elif option == 2:
        print ("CLICKED MY DUDE")
    elif option == 3:
        quit()

    pygame.display.update()

BTW:

You could keep buttons with callbacks (functions names without ())

    buttons = [
        (play_button, play_function),
        (controls_button, control_function),
        (quit_button, quit_function),
    ]

and then you would call function/callback directly (using ()) without option

            if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
                for rect, callback in buttons:
                    if rect.collidepoint(event.pos):
                        callback() # execute function
                        break # no need to check other buttons

Full working code

import pygame

# --- constants --- (UPPER_CASE_NAMES)

SCREEN_WIDTH = 1280
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 950

WHITE = (255, 255, 255)

# --- functions --- (lower_case_names)

def play_function():
    print("YO I GOT CLICKED")

def controls_function():
    print("CLICKED MY DUDE")

def quit_function():
    pygame.quit()
    quit()

def menu(screen):

    # - init -

    title_font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace", 64)
    button_font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace", 30)

    # - objects -

    play_button = pygame.Rect(250,600,200,100)
    quit_button = pygame.Rect(850,600,200,100)
    controls_button = pygame.Rect(550,600,200,100)

    buttons = [
        (play_button, play_function),
        (controls_button, controls_function),
        (quit_button, quit_function),
    ]

    # - draws -

    screen.fill(WHITE)

    title = title_font.render("Fightastic!", 1, (0,0,0))
    screen.blit(title, (450,300))


    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0,255,0), play_button)
    play_text = button_font.render("START",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(play_text, (310,635))

    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,0,0), quit_button)
    quit_text = button_font.render("QUIT",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(quit_text, (910,635))

    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,229,0), controls_button)
    controls_text = button_font.render("CONTROLS",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(controls_text, (580,635))

    pygame.display.update()

    # - mainloop -

    clock = pygame.time.Clock()

    while True:

        for event in pygame.event.get():
            if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                exit()
            if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
                for rect, callback in buttons:
                    if rect.collidepoint(event.pos):
                        callback() # execute function
                        break # no need to check other buttons

        clock.tick(5) # 5 FPS - to slow down game and use less CPU

# --- main ---

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT))

menu(screen)

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 08 '18 at 20:33

Using mouse input is actually relatively easy to use and you can program powerful interactivity with little code.

I took the code that you gave and made some adjustments and fixes.

Indented the line pygame.display.update().
Implemented full mouse click detection.
Modified the way option was used and the order of the list buttons so that the buttons are in order from left to right.

The main addition is the mouse_pressed[0] == 1 part in the if statement. This takes the list of mouse buttons(left, right, middle) and an int 0 or 1 indicating if they are pressed or not. Hence the code checks if the left button is being pressed.

Here is the code:

import pygame

pygame.init()

def menu():
    title_font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace",64)
    button_font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace", 30)
    screen_size = (1280,950)
    screen = pygame.display.set_mode(screen_size)

    background = (255,255,255)
    screen.fill(background)
    play_button = pygame.Rect(250,600,200,100)
    quit_button = pygame.Rect(850,600,200,100)
    controls_button = pygame.Rect(550,600,200,100)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0,255,0), play_button)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,0,0), quit_button)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,229,0), controls_button)
    title = title_font.render("Fightastic!", 1, (0,0,0))
    screen.blit(title, (450,300))
    play_text = button_font.render("START",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(play_text, (310,635))
    quit_text = button_font.render("QUIT",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(quit_text, (910,635))
    controls_text = button_font.render("CONTROLS",1,(0,0,0))
    screen.blit(controls_text, (580,635))
    buttons = [play_button, controls_button, quit_button]

    while True:

        events = pygame.event.get()
        for event in events:
            if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                exit()

        mouse_cursor = pygame.mouse.get_pos()
        mouse_pressed = pygame.mouse.get_pressed()

        option = -1

        for i in range(len(buttons)):
            if buttons[i].collidepoint( mouse_cursor ) and mouse_pressed[0] == 1:
                option = i

        if option == 0:
            print ("YO I GOT CLICKED")
        elif option == 1:
            print ("CLICKED MY DUDE")
        elif option == 2:
            quit()

        pygame.display.update()

menu()

I hope this was helpful and if you have any further questions please feel free to post a comment below!

If the this answered your question please accept the answer. — Micheal O'Dwyer, Jan 10 '18 at 17:08
Oh sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. I haven't really used Stack Overflow before. — Alisha Jain, Jan 11 '18 at 18:09

How to get mouse clicks

2 Answers2