How to grab keyboard events on an element which doesn't accept focus?

Question

I know that for handling keyboard events in an input field you can use:

$('input').keyup(function(e){
var code = e.keyCode // and 13 is the keyCode for Enter
});

But, now, I have some div and li elements, and I don't have a form element, and none of my elements are considered to be form elements and none of them accept focus or tab and stuff like that.

But now I need to handle the keyup (or keydown, or keypress, doesn't matter) event in a div element. I tried:

$('div#modal').keyup(function(e){
   if (e.keyCode == 13)
   {
      $('#next').click(); // Mimicking mouse click to go to the next level.
   }
});

But the problem is, it doesn't work. What should I do?

Answer 1

A div by default cannot be given focus. However, you can change that by adding a tabindex attribute to the div:

<div tabindex="0" id="example"></div>

You can then give the div focus, and also blur it with the hover event:

$("#example").hover(function() {
    this.focus();
}, function() {
    this.blur();
}).keydown(function(e) {
    alert(e.keyCode);
});

When the div has focus, it will accept keyboard events. You can see an example of this working here.

Answer 2

I'm late but the correct way to ensure the proper event fire now is by using the HTML5 new attribute "contenteditable":

<div id="myEditableDiv" contenteditable="true"> txt_node </div>

classic Js mechanic can then be applied:

var el = document.getElementById('myEditableDiv');
el.addEventListener('keypress', function(e){console.log(e.target.innerText);});
el.addEventListener('keyup', function(e){console.log(e.target.innerText);});
el.addEventListener('keydown', function(e){console.log(e.target.innerText);});

Answer 3

Interesting question. (Here another for you, how to know the div has focus?) As I can see, your div is a popup (its id is dialog). Here you have a workaround:

On popup open:

$("div#modal").data("isOpen", true);

On poup close:

$("div#modal").data("isOpen", false);

Then, the binding:

$('body').keyup(function(e){  //Binding to body (it accepts key events)
   if($("div#modal").data("isOpen")){  //Means we're in the dialog
       if (e.keyCode == 13) //This keyup would be in the div dialog
       {
          $('#next').click(); // Mimicking mouse click to go to the next level.
       }
   }
});

This way, we're mimicking keyup event on the div. Hope this helps. Cheers

PS: Note that you can use #dialog instead of div#dialog