Event handling allows your application to receive input from the user. Event handling is initalised (along with video) with a call to:

SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO);

Internally, SDL stores all the events waiting to be handled in an event queue. Using functions like SDL_PollEvent and SDL_PeepEvents you can observe and handle waiting input events.

The key to event handling in SDL is the SDL_Event union. The event queue itself is composed of a series of SDL_Event unions, one for each waiting event. SDL_Event unions are read from the queue with the SDL_PollEvent function and it is then up to the application to process the information stored with them.

• SDL_Event — General event structure
• SDL_ActiveEvent — Application visibility event structure
• SDL_KeyboardEvent — Keyboard event structure
• SDL_MouseMotionEvent — Mouse motion event structure
• SDL_MouseButtonEvent — Mouse button event structure
• SDL_JoyAxisEvent — Joystick axis motion event structure
• SDL_JoyButtonEvent — Joystick button event structure
• SDL_JoyHatEvent — Joystick hat position change event structure
• SDL_JoyBallEvent — Joystick trackball motion event structure
• SDL_ResizeEvent — Window resize event structure
• SDL_ExposeEvent — Quit requested event
• SDL_SysWMEvent — Platform-dependent window manager event.
• SDL_UserEvent — A user-defined event type
• SDL_QuitEvent — Quit requested event
• SDL_keysym — Keysym structure
• SDLKey — Keysym definitions.
  
  

• SDL_PumpEvents — Pumps the event loop, gathering events from the input devices.
• SDL_PeepEvents — Checks the event queue for messages and optionally returns them.
• SDL_PollEvent — Polls for currently pending events.
• SDL_WaitEvent — Waits indefinitely for the next available event.
• SDL_PushEvent — Pushes an event onto the event queue
• SDL_SetEventFilter — Sets up a filter to process all events before they are posted to the event queue.
• SDL_GetEventFilter — Retrieves a pointer to he event filter
• SDL_EventState — This function allows you to set the state of processing certain events.
• SDL_GetKeyState — Get a snapshot of the current keyboard state
• SDL_GetModState — Get the state of modifier keys.
• SDL_SetModState — Set the current key modifier state
• SDL_GetKeyName — Get the name of an SDL virtual keysym
• SDL_EnableUNICODE — Enable UNICODE translation
• SDL_EnableKeyRepeat — Set keyboard repeat rate.
• SDL_GetMouseState — Retrieve the current state of the mouse
• SDL_GetRelativeMouseState — Retrieve the current state of the mouse
• SDL_GetAppState — Get the state of the application
• SDL_JoystickEventState — Enable/disable joystick event polling