KEY_DOWN not working in CURSES - curses

Question

I'm building a curses module and using KEY_DOWN to check if a arrow down key is pressed.
But, I get a Name error saying KEY_DOWN is not defined.
if value == KEY_DOWN:
NameError: global name 'KEY_DOWN' is not defined

Answer 1

Good day!
You have to do:
if value == curses.KEY_DOWN:
for it to work.
Hope this works!!!
But if this doesn't work show us your code (so we can analyze it)

Answer 2

To follow up to mvndaai's answer, if you want to detect arrow keys in Python, you have to AND together the three different ASCII values. For example:
key = getch()
if key == (27 and 91 and 65): #27 is ESC, 91 is [, and 65 is A
print("Up key pressed!")
if key == (27 and 91 and 66):
print("Down key pressed!")
if key == (27 and 91 and 67):
print("Right key pressed!")
if key == (27 and 91 and 68):
print("Left key pressed!")

Answer 3

I am not sure why the yave a gloabl named KEY_DOWN, but if you want a key down, you need to do 3 getchs. Warning, the first getch is the same as an ESC. That means you either make sure it doesn't close on ESC or do a work around like I did below. I also included a chart of what you will get as a getch for each key.
KeyESCUPDOWNRIGHTLEFT
getch2727272727
getch [[[[
getch ABCD
Which means that when you hit any Arrow key and you are triggering a ESC.
In ruby I tried a work around of checking for 27, then doing a quick timeout on another getch. If that gets a [ it is an arrow or something else, otherwise it is the escape key. Here is my ruby code:
def read_key
ch = getch
return check_escape_chars if ch == 27
ch
end
def check_escape_chars
require 'timeout'
begin
Timeout.timeout(0.0001) {getch}
case getch
when "A"; return "UP"
when "B"; return "DOWN"
when "C"; return "RIGHT"
when "D"; return "LEFT"
end
rescue Timeout::Error
return "ESC"
end
end