ConsoleKeyboard

Cross-platform reading of keyboard events in the terminal.

Makes it possible to process key presses in the terminal (including arrow keys, escape, enter, etc.) in Linux, Windows, MacOS.

Attention: only works with PHP 7.4 and above, and uses FFI on Windows.

Usage

First, you need to create the Keyboard class using the static create() method, which will create the desired version of the class for the current platform:

$k = Keyboard::create();

Then you need to use a foreach loop to read the incoming keystrokes:

foreach($k->read() as $key) {

}

You don't have to setup console modes to hide the output of the keys pressed - the Keyboard class does this automatically when the loop starts and restores the console mode when exiting the loop.

Attention: Pressing Ctrl-C interrupts the reading cycle.

Inside the loop you do the processing of each key press, for example displaying the name of each key pressed:

$k = Keyboard::create();
foreach($k->read() as $key) {
  echo $key . PHP_EOL;
}

Inside the loop, you can implement any logic, checking which key is pressed, for example, in the above example you can add an exit from the loop using the q key:

$k = Keyboard::create();
foreach($k->read() as $key) {
  if ($key == 'q') {
    break;
  }

  echo $key . PHP_EOL;
}

For keys such as arrow keys, escape, enter, spacebar, insert, delete, etc., the Keyboard class defines a set of constants that can be used in comparison:

$k = Keyboard::create();
foreach($k->read() as $key) {
  if ($key == 'q' || $key == Keyboard::ESC) {
    break;
  }

  echo $key . PHP_EOL;
}

If you want to get not only the name of the key pressed but also the code (for Linux/MacOS this is ANSI code, for Windows this is scan code), you should use the readKey() method to read keys, instead of read().

The readKey() method returns a Key object containing the key name and code, which are accessible using the getKey() and getRawKey() methods, respectively.

A Key object can be compared to a string, which casts it to a string and returns the name of the key. An example of displaying the names and codes of the keys pressed; the q key exits the reading loop:

$k = Keyboard::create();
foreach($k->readKey() as $key) {
  if ($key == 'q') {
    break;
  }

  echo $key->getKey() . ' (' . $key->getRawKey() . ')' . PHP_EOL;
}

Key Constants

Constant	Key name
ESC	Escape
SPACE	Space
ENTER	Enter
TAB	Tab
BACKSPACE	Backspace
INS	Insert
DEL	Delete
HOME	Home
END	End
UP	Up arrow
DOWN	Down arrow
LEFT	Left arrow
RIGHT	Right arrow
PGUP	Page Up
PGDOWN	Page Down
F1	F1 key
F2	F2 key
F3	F3 key
F4	F4 key
F5	F5 key
F6	F6 key
F7	F7 key
F8	F8 key
F9	F9 key
F10	F10 key
F11	F11 key
F12	F12 key
F13	F13 key
F14	F14 key
F15	F15 key
F16	F16 key
F17	F17 key
F18	F18 key
F19	F19 key
F20	F20 key
F21	F21 key
F22	F22 key
F23	F23 key
F24	F24 key

Why Generator?

The read() and readKey() methods return a generator, so you must use a foreach loop or another way of working with iterators to read keyboard input.

This is implemented this way because it allows the Keyboard class to automatically setup console modes at the beginning of reading console input and restore console modes after the end of the reading cycle.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the BSD 3-Clause license.