jquery-ui Dialog: Make a button in the dialog the default action (Enter key)

Question

In a jquery modal dialog, is there a way to select a button as the default action (action to execute when the user presses enter)?

Example of jquery web site: jquer

Answer 1

The simplest way would be to use the submit action on a form within the dialog, however:

• I did not want to require a form within dialog (N.B. different browsers handle the enter key differently, and some do not always do a submit on enter).
• I wanted this to work if the user clicks in the title pane or button pane prior to pressing enter.
• I wanted to make a library method that I can use for ANY jQueryUI dialog.

The company I work for is 'EBL' and I avoid global scope...hence the prefix on the functions below:

EBL.onUiDialogOpen = function (event, ui, hideX, actionFirstButtonOnEnterKey) {

    if (hideX) {
        // There is no option to hide the 'X' so override.
        $(".ui-dialog-titlebar-close").hide();
    }

    if (actionFirstButtonOnEnterKey) {
        /* (event.target) will give the div that will become the content 
        of a UI dialog, once div is 'opened' is it surrounded by a 
        parent div that contains title and buttonpane divs as well as 
        content div - so I use .parent()

        ...The keyup function is binded to all descendants, therefore:
              -We need the e.stopPropagation() line.
              -This code is NOT what you want if you DON'T want enter 
               key to initiate first button regardless of selected control.
        */
        $(event.target).parent().bind('keydown.justWhileOpen', function (e) {
            if (e.keyCode === $.ui.keyCode.ENTER) {
                e.stopPropagation();
                $(event.target).next('.ui-dialog-buttonpane')
                    .find('button:first').click();
            }
        });
    }
};

...works in combination with:

EBL.onUiDialogClose = function (event, ui) {
    // Remove keyup handler when we close dialog
    $(event.target).parent().unbind('.justWhileOpen');
};

You do not need the .onUiDialogClose if you are using a dynamically created div and destroying it afterwards.

You can see below how I use these library functions when initialising a non-dynamic dialog...

$('#divName').dialog({
    //...
    open: function (event, ui) { EBL.onUiDialogOpen(event, ui, false, true); },
    close: function (event, ui) { EBL.onUiDialogClose(event, ui); },
    //...
});

So far I have tested this in IE9 and latest chrome/firefox. You should validate the dialog as neccessary in your 'Ok' function.