jQuery Event Keypress: Which key was pressed?

Question

With jQuery, how do I find out which key was pressed when I bind to the keypress event?

$(\'#searchbox input\').bind(\'keypress\', function(e) {});
         


        

Answer 1

If you are using jQuery UI you have translations for common key codes. In ui/ui/ui.core.js:

$.ui.keyCode = { 
    ...
    ENTER: 13, 
    ...
};

There's also some translations in tests/simulate/jquery.simulate.js but I could not find any in the core JS library. Mind you, I merely grep'ed the sources. Maybe there is some other way to get rid of these magic numbers.

You can also make use of String.charCodeAt and .fromCharCode:

>>> String.charCodeAt('\r') == 13
true
>>> String.fromCharCode(13) == '\r'
true