How can I send and recieve in a socket chat room in Python3 without the client being interrupted while typing?

Question

I am currently attempting to create a command line client-server model chat room, however, I have ran into a problem, the problem being that if someone else talks in the chat room, it writes over the input that the other clients are trying to type, which is horrible for a multitude of reasons, especially if said server gets larger. I tried multi-threading, thinking that that would fix my problems, but it did not. Here is the client-side code that I am using currently:

import socket
import threading
while_loop = True
def recv():
    while while_loop == True:
        server_message = client.recv(2048)
        print(server_message.decode('utf-8'))
rt = threading.Thread(target=recv, args=())
def send():
    while while_loop == True:
        message_to_send = input(">>> ")
        client.sendall(bytes(message_to_send, 'utf-8'))
st = threading.Thread(target=send, args=())
rt.start()
st.start()
st.join()
rt.join()

Is there a way that I can make it (without holding up input) to both send and recieve messages in real-time? Thank you for your time, it is appreciated.

Answer 1

I know input() freezes the output until it gets an input so use pynput or keyboard. Example:

import keyboard
import time

while True:
   time.sleep(1)
   print("Listening for input...")
   print(keyboard.read_key())

You might need to use another thread to collect input then send: