[python] Pygame mouse clicking detection

I was wondering how to write code that would detect the mouse clicking on a sprite. For example:

if #Function that checks for mouse clicked on Sprite:
    print ("You have opened a chest!")

The MOUSEBUTTONDOWN event occurs once when you click the mouse button and the MOUSEBUTTONUP event occurs once when the mouse button is released. The pygame.event.Event() object has two attributes that provide information about the mouse event. pos is a tuple that stores the position that was clicked. button stores the button that was clicked. Each mouse button is associated a value. For instance the value of the attributes is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for the left mouse button, middle mouse button, right mouse button, mouse wheel up respectively mouse wheel down. When multiple keys are pressed, multiple mouse button events occur. Further explanations can be found in the documentation of the module pygame.event.

Use the rect attribute of the pygame.sprite.Sprite object and the collidepoint method to see if the Sprite was clicked. Pass the list of events to the update method of the pygame.sprite.Group so that you can process the events in the Sprite class:

class SpriteObject(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    # [...]

    def update(self, event_list):

        for event in event_list:
            if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
                if self.rect.collidepoint(event.pos):
                    # [...]

my_sprite = SpriteObject()
group = pygame.sprite.Group(my_sprite)

# [...]

run = True
while run:
    event_list = pygame.event.get()
    for event in event_list:
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            run = False 

    group.update(event_list)

    # [...]

Minimal example: repl.it/@Rabbid76/PyGame-MouseClick

import pygame

class SpriteObject(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self, x, y, color):
        super().__init__() 
        self.original_image = pygame.Surface((50, 50), pygame.SRCALPHA)
        pygame.draw.circle(self.original_image, color, (25, 25), 25)
        self.click_image = pygame.Surface((50, 50), pygame.SRCALPHA)
        pygame.draw.circle(self.click_image, color, (25, 25), 25)
        pygame.draw.circle(self.click_image, (255, 255, 255), (25, 25), 25, 4)
        self.image = self.original_image 
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect(center = (x, y))
        self.clicked = False

    def update(self, event_list):
        for event in event_list:
            if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
                if self.rect.collidepoint(event.pos):
                    self.clicked = not self.clicked

        self.image = self.click_image if self.clicked else self.original_image

pygame.init()
window = pygame.display.set_mode((300, 300))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

sprite_object = SpriteObject(*window.get_rect().center, (128, 128, 0))
group = pygame.sprite.Group([
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() // 3, window.get_height() // 3, (128, 0, 0)),
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() * 2 // 3, window.get_height() // 3, (0, 128, 0)),
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() // 3, window.get_height() * 2 // 3, (0, 0, 128)),
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() * 2// 3, window.get_height() * 2 // 3, (128, 128, 0)),
])

run = True
while run:
    clock.tick(60)
    event_list = pygame.event.get()
    for event in event_list:
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            run = False 

    group.update(event_list)

    window.fill(0)
    group.draw(window)
    pygame.display.flip()

pygame.quit()
exit()

See further Creating multiple sprites with different update()'s from the same sprite class in Pygame

The current position of the mouse can be determined via pygame.mouse.get_pos(). The return value is a tuple that represents the x and y coordinates of the mouse cursor. pygame.mouse.get_pressed() returns a list of Boolean values ??that represent the state (True or False) of all mouse buttons. The state of a button is True as long as a button is held down. When multiple buttons are pressed, multiple items in the list are True. The 1st, 2nd and 3rd elements in the list represent the left, middle and right mouse buttons.

Detect evaluate the mouse states in the Update method of the pygame.sprite.Sprite object:

class SpriteObject(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    # [...]

    def update(self, event_list):

        mouse_pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos()
        mouse_buttons = pygame.mouse.get_pressed()

        if  self.rect.collidepoint(mouse_pos) and any(mouse_buttons):
            # [...]

my_sprite = SpriteObject()
group = pygame.sprite.Group(my_sprite)

# [...]

run = True
while run:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            run = False

    group.update(event_list)

    # [...]

Minimal example: repl.it/@Rabbid76/PyGame-MouseHover

import pygame

class SpriteObject(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self, x, y, color):
        super().__init__() 
        self.original_image = pygame.Surface((50, 50), pygame.SRCALPHA)
        pygame.draw.circle(self.original_image, color, (25, 25), 25)
        self.hover_image = pygame.Surface((50, 50), pygame.SRCALPHA)
        pygame.draw.circle(self.hover_image, color, (25, 25), 25)
        pygame.draw.circle(self.hover_image, (255, 255, 255), (25, 25), 25, 4)
        self.image = self.original_image 
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect(center = (x, y))
        self.hover = False

    def update(self):
        mouse_pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos()
        mouse_buttons = pygame.mouse.get_pressed()

        #self.hover = self.rect.collidepoint(mouse_pos)
        self.hover = self.rect.collidepoint(mouse_pos) and any(mouse_buttons)

        self.image = self.hover_image if self.hover else self.original_image

pygame.init()
window = pygame.display.set_mode((300, 300))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

sprite_object = SpriteObject(*window.get_rect().center, (128, 128, 0))
group = pygame.sprite.Group([
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() // 3, window.get_height() // 3, (128, 0, 0)),
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() * 2 // 3, window.get_height() // 3, (0, 128, 0)),
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() // 3, window.get_height() * 2 // 3, (0, 0, 128)),
    SpriteObject(window.get_width() * 2// 3, window.get_height() * 2 // 3, (128, 128, 0)),
])

run = True
while run:
    clock.tick(60)
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            run = False 

    group.update()

    window.fill(0)
    group.draw(window)
    pygame.display.flip()

pygame.quit()
exit()

I assume your game has a main loop, and all your sprites are in a list called sprites.

In your main loop, get all events, and check for the MOUSEBUTTONDOWN or MOUSEBUTTONUP event.

while ... # your main loop
  # get all events
  ev = pygame.event.get()

  # proceed events
  for event in ev:

    # handle MOUSEBUTTONUP
    if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONUP:
      pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos()

      # get a list of all sprites that are under the mouse cursor
      clicked_sprites = [s for s in sprites if s.rect.collidepoint(pos)]
      # do something with the clicked sprites...

So basically you have to check for a click on a sprite yourself every iteration of the mainloop. You'll want to use mouse.get_pos() and rect.collidepoint().

Pygame does not offer event driven programming, as e.g. cocos2d does.

Another way would be to check the position of the mouse cursor and the state of the pressed buttons, but this approach has some issues.

if pygame.mouse.get_pressed()[0] and mysprite.rect.collidepoint(pygame.mouse.get_pos()):
  print ("You have opened a chest!")

You'll have to introduce some kind of flag if you handled this case, since otherwise this code will print "You have opened a chest!" every iteration of the main loop.

handled = False

while ... // your loop

  if pygame.mouse.get_pressed()[0] and mysprite.rect.collidepoint(pygame.mouse.get_pos()) and not handled:
    print ("You have opened a chest!")
    handled = pygame.mouse.get_pressed()[0]

Of course you can subclass Sprite and add a method called is_clicked like this:

class MySprite(Sprite):
  ...

  def is_clicked(self):
    return pygame.mouse.get_pressed()[0] and self.rect.collidepoint(pygame.mouse.get_pos())

So, it's better to use the first approach IMHO.

I was looking for the same answer to this question and after much head scratching this is the answer I came up with:

#Python 3.4.3 with Pygame
import pygame

pygame.init()
pygame.display.set_caption('Crash!')
window = pygame.display.set_mode((300, 300))


# Draw Once
Rectplace = pygame.draw.rect(window, (255, 0, 0),(100, 100, 100, 100))
pygame.display.update()
# Main Loop
while True:
    # Mouse position and button clicking.
    pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos()
    pressed1, pressed2, pressed3 = pygame.mouse.get_pressed()
    # Check if the rect collided with the mouse pos
    # and if the left mouse button was pressed.
    if Rectplace.collidepoint(pos) and pressed1:
        print("You have opened a chest!")
    # Quit pygame.
            for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            pygame.quit()
            quit(1)

The pygame documentation for mouse events is here. You can either use the pygame.mouse.get_pressed method in collaboration with the pygame.mouse.get_pos (if needed). But please use the mouse click event via a main event loop. The reason why the event loop is better is due to "short clicks". You may not notice these on normal machines, but computers that use tap-clicks on trackpads have excessively small click periods. Using the mouse events will prevent this.

EDIT: To perform pixel perfect collisions use pygame.sprite.collide_rect() found on their docs for sprites.