How do I get the character pressed in a textarea

Question

This is really weird.

I have a textarea. I listen to the keyup and keypress events.

When I press "(", keypress is fired with e.keyCode == e.which == 40

When I press the arrow down key, keyup is fired with e.keyCode == e.which == 40

Why is this so strange?

Answer 1

Traditionally, the arrow keys overlapped ASCII codes, but were represented to the programmer as a two-byte sequence so you were aware that a special key has been pressed. With the advent of Unicode this is no longer a clean solution.

Browsers have implemented different ways of representing special key input to the Javascript runtime. The details are explained here .

I usually use the 'keydown' event when detecting arrow keys, as this event has the correct keycode attached and will fire with a different keycode(the one for 9) when the user is typing a left parenthesis. This may not work in cases where you want to allow the user to repeat the keyed event by holding down the arrow key.

Answer 2

keydown and keyup events provide a code indicating which key is pressed, while keypress indicates which character was entered.

Char code for "(" is 40 ( keypress event) and key code for down arrow is also 40 ( keyup ).

Try:

String.fromCharCode(40); // "("