How can I repeat code every 5 seconds without clearing screen?

Question

I am making a personal Live NHL stats program. Currently I have an output of

______________________________________________
Buffalo Sabres 0
Edmonton Oilers 0
______________________________________________
Toronto Maple Leafs 0
Calgary Flames 0
______________________________________________
Carolina Hurricanes 0
Philadelphia Flyers 0
______________________________________________

To get the home and away goals I am parsing NHLs JSON API like this.

   goals_home = jsonResponse["liveData"]['linescore']['teams']['home']['goals']

Right now when I run the program it just keeps repeating itself every 3 seconds without clearing the screen and looks messy. Is there a method to just clear the numbers and just repeat those in the same spot.

Generate HTML snd refresh. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16399355/refresh-a-local-web-page-using-python — balderman, Nov 12 '21 at 17:13
You can try curses library for python. Probably needs some learnings though. — Hitobat, Nov 12 '21 at 17:14
If you're just writing the scores to stdout with `print()`, see https://stackoverflow.com/q/37071230/245915 — nofinator, Nov 12 '21 at 17:15
@balderman If you generate the HTML yourself, there's no need for Selenium, you can refresh it using JS. However generating HTML would require learning to use a web server (Flask or similar) and there are easier alternatives if OP is content with just terminal output. — Jan Pokorný, Nov 12 '21 at 17:33

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 12 '21 at 17:16

You can use escape characters to "go up a line", after which you will overwrite what's already printed. You just need to know how many lines you printed. Also be aware this might not work in every terminal.

print("\033[F" * num_lines, end="")

If you want to do something more complicated, though, I recommend finding a dedicated library.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 12 '21 at 17:16

0

If you're using print(goals_home) to display the output, perhaps try print(goals_home, end='\r'). This end will replace the default new line, so that every time it prints, it will overwrite the previous line.

answered Nov 12 '21 at 17:16

UdonN00dle

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`\r` only goes to the beginning of the current line, so it works only for a single-line output. – Jan Pokorný Nov 12 '21 at 17:30

How can I repeat code every 5 seconds without clearing screen?

2 Answers2