Python timed input

Question

I'm writing a python game-bot where a user needs to send in an input within a certain amount of time.

My current implementation of this is to spawn a new thread that sleeps for that amount of time, then checks if an input has been sent. A nonce is added as the time could run out after another thread starts which would cause the if chatid in user_threads part to evaluate to true. Should I use this method or is there a better solution to having a timed input (in the sense less likely to fail due to like race conditions).

I've also tried using multiprocessing.Process but sharing variables to the other process seems to be a lot more cumbersome.

from threading import Thread
from time import time, sleep
from random import randint

user_threads = {}

def timeout(t,r):
    while time()-t<5:
        sleep(5-time()+t)
    if chatid in user_threads:
        if user_threads[chatid][3] != r:
            return
        del user_threads[chatid]
        print("Too slow")

def recvans(ans,inp):
    if ans==inp:
        print("yes")
    else:
        print("no")

def starttimer(chatid):
    r = randint(0,1<<128)
    user_threads[chatid] = [None,None,None,r]
    user_threads[chatid][2] = ["a"]
    P = Thread(target = timeout, args = (time(),r))
    user_threads[chatid][0] = P
    user_threads[chatid][1] = recvans
    P.start()

while True: # simulating user input from different users (here chatid=1)
    inp = input()
    chatid = 1
    if chatid in user_threads:
        t, func, args, _ = user_threads[chatid]
        if t == None:
            print("Please wait")
            continue
        del user_threads[chatid]
        args += [inp]
        func(*args)
        continue
    if inp == "Start":
        starttimer(chatid)
        continue
    if inp == "Quit":
        break
    print("Unknown msg")

\$\begingroup\$ Usually is is done via select.select \$\endgroup\$

vnp
– vnp

2020-10-13 15:29:46 +00:00
Commented Oct 13, 2020 at 15:29 — vnp
– vnp, Commented Oct 13, 2020 at 15:29

Reinderien · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-13 17:41:52Z

1

What @vnp said. Fundamentally,

input uses stdin;
stdin can be interpreted as a file handle so long as you're not in Windows;
select can wait for data availability on such handles.

There's a lot of internet help on this topic, including https://stackoverflow.com/a/3471853/313768 ; to quote the solution there:

import sys 
from select import select

timeout = 10 
print "Enter something:", 
rlist, _, _ = select([sys.stdin], [], [], timeout) 
if rlist:
    s = sys.stdin.readline()
    print s 
else:
    print "No input. Moving on..."

answered Oct 13, 2020 at 17:41

Reinderien

71.2k5 gold badges76 silver badges257 bronze badges

\$\begingroup\$ ahh ic this looks way cleaner for my case since I'm using this in context of a game which receives http(s) requests is there a similar way to do this? \$\endgroup\$

Ariana
– Ariana

2020-10-14 13:08:46 +00:00
Commented Oct 14, 2020 at 13:08

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