Store Keyboard Input In Variable As String

Question

I am trying to get a string of text and write it a file if the file does not exist. Here is the code so far.

#!/usr/bin/python

import os.path as path

configFileLocation = "~/.sajan.io-client"

def createConfig():
    print "Creating config file\n"
    apikey = input("Enter the API key: ")
    configFile = open(configFileLocation, "w")
    configFile.write(apikey)
    configFile.close()

if path.isfile(configFileLocation) == False:
    createConfig()

When run, I get the prompt to Enter the API key:, and whatever I enter in doesn't seem to be used as a string. Here is the output I get and I can't make sense of it. It's almost as if Python is trying to use what I enter in as a variable in the script.

Creating config file

Enter the API key: somerandomapikey123
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./new-thought.py", line 15, in <module>
    createConfig()
  File "./new-thought.py", line 9, in createConfig
    apikey = input("Enter the API key: ")
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'somerandomapikey123' is not defined

whats your python version ? do `python --version` on terminal ! — Mazdak, Oct 20 '14 at 07:51

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 20 '14 at 07:52

You are using Python2, use raw_input instead of input. raw_input will make sure the input is stored as a string:

Python 2.7.3 (default, Jan  2 2013, 16:53:07)
[GCC 4.7.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> result = input('Hello: ')
Hello: world
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'world' is not defined
>>> result = raw_input('Hello: ')
Hello: world
>>> result
'world'

Store Keyboard Input In Variable As String

1 Answers1