I tried searching but unsure of what terms to look for.
I'm using jQuery and would like to use the keypress event in a textbox, but prevent all non-printable characters (ie. Enter, ESC, arrow keys, backspace, tab, ctrl, insert, F1-F12, etc) from triggering the event.
Is there an easy way to determine if it is printable?
The selected answer for this question is not complete. It does not handle the case where a character key is being pressed in combination with a modifier key (e.g. CTRL-A).
Try, for example, typing CTRL-A using firefox with the following code. The current answer will consider it as a character:
HTML:
<input placeholder=Try typing CTRL-A in Firefox style=width: 200px/>
JavaScript:
$(input).keypress(function (e) {
if (e.which !== 0) {
alert(String.fromCharCode(e.which));
}
});
Note: an alert won't be fired if using some browsers (such as Chrome), since they don't fire a keypress event for non-character inputs.
A better solution might be:
HTML:
<input placeholder=Try typing CTRL-A in Firefox style=width: 200px/>
JavaScript:
$(input).keypress(function (e) {
if (e.which !== 0 &&
!e.ctrlKey && !e.metaKey && !e.altKey
) {
alert(String.fromCharCode(e.which));
}
});
In this case, the alert is only being fired when A is pressed, not CTRL-A for all browsers.
