Simple quiz in the console with python.

In this tutorial, we will make a simple quiz program with python and some excellent modules like json, colored and random.

We will implement a point system and colorful feedback for the user. We also make it so the questions and answers are shuffled randomly.

Let us get into it!

¶Imports

We start by importing several modules.

We need the json module to open the file where our quiz is located and parse it to a valid python list/dictionary. Next, we also get the builtin-in os so we can clear the console later. To shuffle the answers and questions we get the shuffle() function from random. Last but not least we import colored which allows to color text in the console easily, this is the only module that we have to download with pip install colored.

# Import json
import json

# Import os to clear the console
import os

# Import shuffle from random to shuffle the lists.
from random import shuffle

# Import colored so we can color text in the console.
# Must be installed with pip install colored
import colored

¶Quiz Setup

Now we continue with the setup which includes all the stuff we do before the question loop.

We start by getting the contents of our questions.json file and we parse the json content to the data variable.

# Opening the questions file
with open('questions.json', 'r') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

The file looks like this. As you see the questions lists contain the question as to the first item and an infinite amount of answers in another list as a second item. The first item in the answer list is always the right answer.

{
	"name": "Geography Quiz",
	"questions": [
		["What is the Capital of France?", ["Paris", "Montpellier", "Toulouse"]],
		["Which country shares a border with the US to to the South?", ["Mexico", "Canada"]],
		["How is the desert in northern Africa called?", ["Sahara", "Gobi", "Urals"]]
	]
}

After opening the file we define some variables which will later use to tell the user how he did.

# Amount of right answers.
rightAnswers = 0

# Amount of questions.
amountQuestions = len(data['questions'])

Now we also shuffle the list of questions in place.

# Shuffle the list of questions.
shuffle(data['questions'])

¶colorText function

To make it even easier to use the colored module we make a little function to help us. This function simply returns a colored string. We do this because it would be tedious to reset the color on every string manually.

def colorText(text, color):
    return f'{colored.fg(color)}{text}{colored.fg(15)}' # Reset color to white`

¶Quiz Question Loop

Now let’s get into the main part of the program: The Question Loop. We loop over the previously shuffled list of questions and unpack it into two variables. We then clear the console.

# Do all this for each question.
for question, answers in data['questions']:

    # Clear Console
    os.system('cls')

Next, we save the right answer to a variable we can do this because the first item in every answer list is the correct one. We also make the right index variable.

    # get the right answer, which is the first item in list.
    rightAnswer = answers[0]
    rightIndex = 0

After that, we shuffle the answers and loop / enumerate over them so we get the index. Then we nicely format a string and if the current answer is the right one we set the right index variable to the current index.

# Shuffle the list of answers
    shuffle(answers)

    print('nn'+question+'n')
    for index, answer in enumerate(answers):
        print(f'{index + 1}. {answer}')

        if answer == rightAnswer:
            rightIndex = index

We continue by asking the user what his answer is, we want him or her to give us the index of the answer.

answerIndex = int(input('nType in the Number in front of the correct answer: '))

After we have the answer from the user we check if it was the right one, for this, we use the rightIndex variable. We then give the user a nice colored message and add one to the rightAnswers variable. If the answer was wrong we tell the user that and what the right answer would have been.

    # Check if the correct answer was selected.
    if answerIndex == (rightIndex + 1):
        print(colorText('Right', 2))
        rightAnswers += 1
    else:
        print(colorText('Wrong!', 1))
        print(colorText(f'Right Answer -> {rightAnswer}', 1))

	input('nEnter to Continue ...')

¶Result

After the question loop, we clear the console once again and we tell the user how he or she did.

# Clear Console
os.system('cls')

# Showing the user how he did
print('nn'+f'You have {rightAnswers} out of {amountQuestions} questions right!')

That’s it!

¶Conclusion

Excellent! You have successfully created a quiz using Python code! See how you can add more features to this program such as more colors or multiple right answers.