How do I use my own loop with pyhook instead of pumpMessages()?

Question

I'm trying to use pyhooks to detect mouse clicks anywhere on screen. The problem is that I can only get it to work with PumpMessages(). I'd like it operate inside of a while loop that I've constructed. Is there a way to accomplish this/why does it need pumpMessages?

def onclick(event):
    print 'Mouse click!'
    return True


hm = pyHook.HookManager()

hm.MouseLeftDown = onclick

hm.HookMouse()
pythoncom.PumpMessages()
hm.UnhookMouse()

The above is the only way I can get it to run.

I'm trying to accomplish something like this:

sTime = time.time()

def onclick(event):
    global sTime
    print 'Time between clicks equals: %i' % time.time() - stime
    sTime = time.time()
    return True

hm.MouseLeftDown = OnClick

while True:

    hm.HookMouse()

EDIT: I am not a smart man. There is no need for a while loop in the scenario..

Sigh..

Answer 1

Just for future reference, you can use pythoncom.PumpWaitingMessages() inside the while loop, since it does not lock the execution. Something like this:

while True:
    # your code here
    pythoncom.PumpWaitingMessages()

Answer 2

From the pyhook tutorial:

Any application that wishes to receive notifications of global input events must have a Windows message pump.

However, this shouldn't necessarily prevent your code from working. Why don't you post what you are trying to do, and we can look for a way to use the message pump in the context of your code.

One way you might be able to solve your problem is through PostQuitMessages(original solution here)

import ctypes
ctypes.windll.user32.PostQuitMessage(0)