How can I limit the user input to only integers in Python

Question

I'm trying to make a multiple choice survey that allows the user to pick from options 1-x. How can I make it so that if the user enters any characters besides numbers, return something like "That's an invalid answer"

def Survey():
    print('1) Blue')
    print('2) Red')
    print('3) Yellow')
    question = int(input('Out of these options\(1,2,3), which is your favourite?'))
    if question == 1:
        print('Nice!')
    elif question == 2:
        print('Cool')
    elif question == 3:
        print('Awesome!')
    else:
        print('That\'s not an option!')

Answer 1

Your code would become:

def Survey():

    print('1) Blue')
    print('2) Red')
    print('3) Yellow')

    while True:
        try:
            question = int(input('Out of these options\(1,2,3), which is your favourite?'))
            break
        except:
            print("That's not a valid option!")

    if question == 1:
        print('Nice!')
    elif question == 2:
        print('Cool')
    elif question == 3:
        print('Awesome!')
    else:
        print('That\'s not an option!')

The way this works is it makes a loop that will loop infinitely until only numbers are put in. So say I put '1', it would break the loop. But if I put 'Fooey!' the error that WOULD have been raised gets caught by the except statement, and it loops as it hasn't been broken.

Answer 2

The best way would be to use a helper function which can accept a variable type along with the message to take input.

def _input(message, input_type=str):
    while True:
      try:
        return input_type (input(message))
    except:pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    _input("Only accepting integer : ", int)
    _input("Only accepting float : ", float)
    _input("Accepting anything as string : ")

So when you want an integer , you can pass it that i only want integer, just in case you can accept floating number you pass the float as a parameter. It will make your code really slim so if you have to take input 10 times , you don't want to write try catch blocks ten times.