Prevent form submission on Enter key press

Question

I have a form with two text boxes, one select drop down and one radio button. When the enter key is pressed, I want

Answer 1

Cross Browser Solution

Some older browsers implemented keydown events in a non-standard way.

KeyBoardEvent.key is the way it is supposed to be implemented in modern browsers.

which and keyCode are deprecated nowadays, but it doesn't hurt to check for these events nonetheless so that the code works for users that still use older browsers like IE.

The isKeyPressed function checks if the pressed key was enter and event.preventDefault() hinders the form from submitting.

  if (isKeyPressed(event, 'Enter', 13)) {
    event.preventDefault();
    console.log('enter was pressed and is prevented');
  }

Minimal working example

JS

function isKeyPressed(event, expectedKey, expectedCode) {
  const code = event.which || event.keyCode;

  if (expectedKey === event.key || code === expectedCode) {
    return true;
  }
  return false;
}

document.getElementById('myInput').addEventListener('keydown', function(event) {
  if (isKeyPressed(event, 'Enter', 13)) {
    event.preventDefault();
    console.log('enter was pressed and is prevented');
  }
});

HTML

https://jsfiddle.net/tobiobeck/z13dh5r2/