How to get mouse scroll wheel event in c - c

Question

I am trying to read mouse events from the /dev/input/mice file. I am able to parse the 3 byte mouse input for getting the three button states and the increments in X and Y coordinates. However, the mouse input when I scroll up is identical to that when I scroll down. How do I distinguish a scroll up event from a scroll down event? Are there any ioctls that can do any required configuration so that I get different inputs from the mouse on these two events?
The following is a simple program to see the input from a mouse when a mouse event occurs. Scroll up and scroll down events cause the same output to be printed by this program (namely, 8 0 0).
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <errno.h>
int main(void) {
int mouse_fd = open("/dev/input/mice", O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK);
signed char input[4];
ssize_t rd_cnt;
if(mouse_fd < 0)
{
perror("Could not open /dev/input/mice");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
while(true)
{
errno = 0;
rd_cnt = read(mouse_fd, input, 4);
if(rd_cnt <= 0 && errno != EAGAIN)
{
perror("Mouse read error:");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
else
{
for(int i = 0; i < rd_cnt; i++)
{
printf("%d", input[i]);
if(i == rd_cnt - 1)
{
printf("\n");
}
else
{
printf("\t");
}
}
}
}
return 0;
}

Answer 1

An alternative would be to use SDL2.
I've managed to mash together an example of reading mouse inputs with SDL, so take what you like from it.
#include <SDL2/SDL.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
char* itoa(int i, char b[]){
char const digit[] = "0123456789";
char* p = b;
if(i<0){
*p++ = '-';
i *= -1;
}
int shifter = i;
do{ //Move to where representation ends
++p;
shifter = shifter/10;
}while(shifter);
*p = '\0';
do{ //Move back, inserting digits as u go
*--p = digit[i%10];
i = i/10;
}while(i);
return b;
}
int main()
{
//initialize the window
bool quit = false;
SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO);
SDL_Window* window = SDL_CreateWindow("Mouse Events", SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, 640, 480, 0);
SDL_Renderer* renderer = SDL_CreateRenderer(window, -1, 0);
// the event that will occur when a mouse event happens
SDL_Event event;
while(!quit)
{
while (SDL_PollEvent(&event)) //returns one is there is a pending event (if an event happens)
{
switch(event.type)
{
case SDL_QUIT: //if the window is exited
quit = true;
break;
case SDL_MOUSEBUTTONDOWN:
switch (event.button.button)
{
case SDL_BUTTON_LEFT:
SDL_ShowSimpleMessageBox(0, "Click", "Left button was pressed!", window);
break;
case SDL_BUTTON_RIGHT:
SDL_ShowSimpleMessageBox(0, "Click", "Right button was pressed!", window);
break;
}
break;
case SDL_MOUSEWHEEL:
if(event.wheel.y == -1) //negative means the scroll wheel has gone away from the user
{
SDL_ShowSimpleMessageBox(0, "Wheel Event", "You rolled away from yourself!", window);
} else if (event.wheel.y == 1) //vice-versa
{
SDL_ShowSimpleMessageBox(0, "Wheel Event", "You rolled towards yourself!", window);
}
}
}
//do some SDL cleanup
SDL_Rect dstrect = { 288, 208, 64, 64 };
SDL_RenderClear(renderer);
SDL_RenderPresent(renderer);
}
}
The event.wheel type can be found here: https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_MouseWheelEvent
Hope this is of some use to you!
If you don't want to use SDL2, it may be worth have a look in the source of the library to see what it's doing.