How Can I Detect Which Key Was Pressed Using jQuery's Keypress Event?

Detecting Keypresses with jQuery: Determining the Pressed Key

In JavaScript, the event object passed to an event handler provides information about the event, including the key pressed. When a keypress event is triggered, this information can be used to determine which key was pressed.

Using keyCode or which

jQuery offers two properties on the event object that can be used to obtain this information:

• keyCode: This property contains the numeric representation of the key pressed. It is supported by most browsers.
• which: This property contains a numeric representation or a character code depending on the browser. It is used for printable characters only and is not supported by all browsers.

Keypress Event Handler

To handle the keypress event and determine the pressed key, you can bind a handler to the keypress event of an element. For example:

$('#searchbox input').bind('keypress', function(e) {
  var code = e.keyCode || e.which;

  if (code === 13) {
    // Handle ENTER keypress
  }
});

In this code, the keyCode property is checked first, followed by the which property as a fallback for browsers that do not support keyCode.

Difference Between keyCode and which

The difference between keyCode and which is primarily in their handling of special characters. keyCode typically returns a numerical value regardless of the pressed character, while which may return a character code for printable characters.

However, there may be browser variations, and it's generally recommended to check both properties and fall back to one or the other depending on the available support.

Conclusion

By using the keyCode or which properties on the event object passed to the keypress event handler, you can determine which key was pressed and trigger specific actions accordingly.

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