How to convert a char to its keycode?

Question

How can I convert a character to its respective keycode?

For example:

• a to 65
• b to 66

Answer 1

As pointed out in the comments: the accepted answer is not correct, because it gives the character code and not the keyCode, which can be different, e.g. 'a'.charCodeAt(0) == 97 while the correct keyCode is 65.

for converting just the standard characters from [a-zA-Z] or numbers [0-9] the code below can be used.

However this does not work correctly for any special keys like ., Ö, # or whatsoever and I did not find a good solution for them. As a workaround one could use a site like http://keycode.info/ (which just captures the onkeydown events and reads the event.keyCode property).

function convertToKeyCode(target) {
    var keyCode = target.value.toUpperCase().charCodeAt(0);
    document.getElementById("keyCodeSpan").innerHTML = keyCode;
}

Keycode: