I want to keep track of which keys are pressed at a given time, like so:
var keys = {};
$(document.body).on('keydown', function(e) {
keys[e.keyCode] = true;
});
$(document.body).on('keyup', function(e) {
delete keys[e.keyCode];
});
However, from MDN it looks like keyCode is deprecated, and suggests key. From testing on Chrome, it looks like key is undefined. The documentation also describes which but I am unsure as to what the differences are.
Is keyCode the right thing to use here? I don't care which keys are down, only that I know that some keys are pressed. I also can't use the input event.
I would suggest to use a fallback mechanism which handles the advise from MDN first and than falls back to the older solutions.
But if you are using jQuery you should use the provided methods to get the key-code
// jquery
$(document.body).on('keyup', function(e) {
delete keys[e.which];
});
// vanilla
document.body.addEventListener('keyup', function (e) {
delete keys[(e.key && e.keyCode.charCodeAt(0)) || e.which || e.keyCode];
}, true);
However this will only be true for printable characters and needs a deeper investigation of the problem usually.
I want to know if ctrl,space,alt,capslock,shift like keys are pressed in my keyboard.
When i do
String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode)
,it returns blank value for these keys but when I do
alert($.trim(String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode))=='')
Then it return false for all keys except space bar.So it would be great if someone may tell me to get the keydown event of these keys
Vanilla JavaScript:
For other constants, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEvent
window.onkeydown = function (e) {
switch (e.keyCode) {
case KeyboardEvent.DOM_VK_SPACE:
alert('space bar!');
break;
case KeyboardEvent.DOM_VK_CAPS_LOCK:
alert('CAPS LOCK!');
break;
case KeyboardEvent.DOM_VK_CONTROL:
alert('control!');
break;
case KeyboardEvent.DOM_VK_SHIFT:
alert('shift!');
break;
case KeyboardEvent.DOM_VK_ALT:
alert('alt!');
break;
}
};
UPDATED FOR REQUIREMENT TO AVOID CASES:
Per the following test, the only numeric values that will, after trimming (and not including numbers not corresponding to the average keyboard), be reduced to an empty string are 9,10,11,12,13,32. Looking at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEvent#Virtual_key_codes , the only ones that correspond are tab, clear, return, and space .
// Run in Firefox where trim() is supported (without need for jQuery):
var arr = [];
for (var i=0; i < 0xFFFF; i++) {
if (String.fromCharCode(i).trim() == '') {
arr.push(i);
}
}
In other words, your own test is not going to catch all cases.
So you have to use numeric comparisons based on the info at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEvent#Virtual_key_codes and BASED ON EXACTLY WHAT CHARACTERS YOU NEED TO INCLUDE (or exclude).
For example, if you consider the cancel key, help key, back space, tab, etc. all to be of the type you mentioned, you can do:
window.onkeydown = function (e) {
if (e.keyCode < 0x30) {
alert('Special key pressed!');
}
};
As you can see, this allows for us to find a whole group of characters within a short amount of code (e.g., without using case). (But if we don't know exactly which characters you want to include or exclude, we can't give you a more precise answer.)
NOTE:
charCode is never set in the keydown and keyup events. In these cases, keyCode is set instead.
you can try
$(window).keydown(function (e){
if (e.ctrlKey) { there are e.altKey & e.shiftKey also.
for other keys use hardcoded integer values.
alert("control");
}
});
I'm not sure about the support of keyIdentifier but if you are using the keyup, keydown or keypress events, but you could possibly do the following. However there are no cross-browser guarantees where charcode is not defined or is zero. Not using jquery to keep things as small as possible, and only detecting the keys that you specified. See article.
Javascript
/*jslint maxerr: 50, indent: 4, browser: true */
(function () {
"use strict";
function addEvent(elem, event, fn) {
if (typeof elem === "string") {
elem = document.getElementById(elem);
}
function listenHandler(e) {
var ret = fn.apply(null, arguments);
if (ret === false) {
e.stopPropagation();
e.preventDefault();
}
return ret;
}
function attachHandler() {
window.event.target = window.event.srcElement;
var ret = fn.call(elem, window.event);
if (ret === false) {
window.event.returnValue = false;
window.event.cancelBubble = true;
}
return ret;
}
if (elem.addEventListener) {
elem.addEventListener(event, listenHandler, false);
} else {
elem.attachEvent("on" + event, attachHandler);
}
}
function checkKeys(e) {
if ("Alt,Shift,Control,CapsLock,U+0020".indexOf(e.keyIdentifier) !== -1) {
alert(e.keyIdentifier);
}
console.log(e.keyIdentifier);
}
addEvent(window, "keydown", checkKeys);
}());
On jsfiddle
Update: reading a bit furter, keyIdentifier is not supported by all browsers and so is not fullly cross-browser friendly.
3.4. New Standard Key and Character Events
The DOM3 standard abandons all hope of creating order among
event.keyCode, event.which and event.charCode, and instead defines new
values for keydown and keyup events. For a while it deprecated the
keypress event and replaced it with the textInput event, but that was
undone. Only a few browsers implemented the first version, and, so
far, no browsers have implemented the newest version. Earlier versions
of the specification defined attributes named event.keyIdentifier and
event.keyLocation. The keyIdentifier was a string that in most cases
looked like "U+0041" where the "0041" part is the unicode value of the
character sent by the key when it is typed without modifiers, in this
case the letter "A". For keys that didn't send unicode characters, or
where the unicode value is not standardized, it was a string like
"Enter", "Shift", "Left" or "F9". The keyLocation attribute gave
values to distinguish among multiple keys that had the same
identifier, like the left and right shift keys, or the keypad number
keys. It was 0 for standard keys, 1 or 2 for left or right versions of
a keys like Shift which appear twice on the keyboard, and 3 for keys
on the numeric keypad.
WebKit implemented support for keyIdentifier and got it mostly right.
Older versions conformed to an older version of the standard and
returned two extra zeros (eg, "U+000041") but this was corrected in
version 525. Windows versions of Safari and Linux versions of Chrome
return bad keyIdentifier values for all of the non-number symbol keys
(WebKit Bug 19906 reported in July 2008). The keyLocation attribute is
always 0 or 3, so it does not distinguish between left and right
modifier keys.
Konqueror returns keyIdentifier values like "Shift" and "Enter"
correctly, but instead of returning the Unicode values, it returns the
typed character itself, "a" or "A" instead of "U+0041". All
keyLocation values are zero, except for modifiers key, which are
always one, regardless of whether the left or right one was pressed.
We cannot, however expect any more browsers to implement that
standard, since it has now changed. The DOM 3 standard no longer
mentions event.keyIdentifier or event.keyLocation. Instead we have
event.key, event.char, event.location.. So far as I know, no browser
has yet implemented this new version of the DOM 3 standard.
In this standard event.char is defined only when you type a printable
character, or another character with a defined code (like tab or
backspace). It's basically like event.charCode except that it is the
character, not the character code and can be any unicode character not
just an ASCII code. Event.key is the same as event.char for printable
keys. For other keys, even ones like tab or backspace that have
character encodings, it is a string like 'Tab', 'Left' or 'F9'. These
values are supposed to be the same on keypress events as they are on
keyup and keydown events, though keypress would not be fired for those
cases where event.char is null.
Note that neither of these pretends to be a keycode identifying a
particular physical key on the keyboard. If you press the /? key on a
US keyboard while shift is off, but press the shift key before
releasing the /? key, then then on keydown you'll get event.key=='/'
and on keyup you'll get event.key=='?'. The only way your Javascript
program will know that those two events go together is if it happens
to know that those two characters are on the same key. There is an
event.locale value that is supposed to give you some clue on what type
of keyboard is being used, but figuring out what keys go with what on
a particular keyboard is up to you.
Clearly this abandonment of the idea of keycodes is going to cause
problems, but is still probably justified. In many (most?) operating
systems, I don't think the browser can actually tell which key was
pressed. In the browser source code I've seen, the keycodes are
generated from the the character codes, not vice versa, by simply
assuming that the character came from a US keyboard. So the keycode
values never really worked for non-US keyboards.
So while the keycode concept was a handly one, it isn't really
practically extensible in the real world. If you want a keycode in the
DOM 3 universe, you'll have to go on using the legacy event.keyCode
value, which, standards or no standards, isn't going away. The DOM 3
standard seems to recognize this, and reluctantly provides an appendix
with some standards for event.keyCode and the like. It casts a rather
weak vote for what I called "IE keycodes" above.
I have the following problem - I'm catching a key event an I need to create a new altered key event(since it seems the keyCode property is read-only) and afterwards handle the newly created KeyEvent. I came across several old posts in StackOverflow where similar situations are handled, but:
I need this to be working under Webkit /there's a solution here in StackOverfow but it is working only in Gecko/
I need to create another KeyEvent, but not TextInputEvent, since the TextInputEvent will only let my specify a string to be inserted, whilst I cannot do that as I use a third party tool that needs to handle this event and I need a keycode.
I tried jQuery#trigger() but it won't work for me. My code is as follows
var event = jQuery.event('keydown');
event.which = 13; //I'm trying to simulate an enter
$('iframe').contents().find('document').find('body').trigger(event); //my content is inside an iframe
(function($){
$(window).load(function(){
var e = $.Event("keydown");
e.which = 13;
e.keyCode = 13;
$('iframe').contents().find('html, body').trigger(e);
});
})(jQuery);
I'm writing a platform game for my university project using the canvas element and Javascript. I'm well on my way, but I'm stuck at how to see if a certain key is being pressed in my players update loop.
I was thinking like this:
if(d) {
// move player right
} else if(a) {
// move player left
} else if(w) {
// move player up
} else if(s) {
// move player down
}
That's psudocode, obviously. The only resources to key presses in Javascript that I can find are events, nothing to see if a key is being pressed at a certain point.
Can anyone shed some light on this?
Setup 4 boolean variables if key is up or down. On keydown set it to true, on keyup set it to false. Than you can do if(key_d == true) { // key d is pressed }
That's the best way to do it. Its not "hacky", add event listeners to handle key presses.
I don't think you can get around using keydown, keyup, or keypress for determining which keys are pressed. However, instead of running this code within one of those event handlers, you could set and unset some global flag within them. Then, when this code runs (I'm assuming it'll be on some kind of interval?), it could check for the flag.
You need an event listener.
//function foo, returns keypress
function foo(e){
var evt=(e)?e:(window.event)?window.event:null;
if(evt){
var key=(evt.charCode)?evt.charCode:
((evt.keyCode)?evt.keyCode:((evt.which)?evt.which:0));
return key;
}
//set event listener
//you could also attach this to your canvas, but that will require tricks
//to make the canvas focusable
document.addEventListener('keydown', foo);
This program taken from a book Pro JavaScript Techniques is used to create hover-like functionality for an Element.
I don`t understand what the author means when he says, in the comments, Normalize the Event object.
Can you tell me
a) why is this necessary, explaining what would happen if it wasn`t normalized
b) how does the code provide achieve the effect
Thank you.
var div = document.getElementsByTagName('div')[0];
div.onmouseover = div.onmouseout = function(e) {
//Normalize the Event object
e = e || window.event;
//Toggle the background colover of the <div>
this.style.background = (e.type == 'mouseover') ? '#EEE' : '#FFF';
};
It's referring to window.event, IE's non-standard version of the event object. If it weren't normalized, it would break in at least one browser.
What the code does is set e to itself (essentially a no-op), if the parameter is truthy (the event parameter is properly set). If not (in IE), it sets it to window.event.