Learn the basics of handling keyboard events in JavaScript to enhance your web applications.

There are three main types of keyboard events:

  1. keydown - Triggered when a key is initially pressed down.
  2. keyup - Fired when a key is released after being pressed down.
  3. keypress - Deprecated event, rarely used in modern development.

When working with keyboard events, it is common to listen for them on the document object. Here’s an example:

document.addEventListener('keydown', event => {
  // Code to handle key press
});

The event object passed to the event listener is a KeyboardEvent, which provides various properties specific to keyboard events.

Some important properties of the KeyboardEvent object include:

  • altKey: Returns true if the Alt key was pressed at the time the event was fired.
  • code: Represents the code of the pressed key, returned as a string.
  • ctrlKey: Returns true if the Ctrl key was pressed.
  • key: Retrieves the value of the pressed key, returned as a string.
  • locale: Returns the keyboard locale value.
  • location: Indicates the location of the key on the keyboard.
  • metaKey: Returns true if the Meta key was pressed.
  • repeat: Indicates whether the key has been repeated (held down without releasing).
  • shiftKey: Returns true if the Shift key was pressed.

To see these properties in action, you can check out this Key Logger Demo by Flavio Copes.

Remember, keyboard events provide valuable functionality for creating interactive and user-friendly web applications. Embrace their power to enhance the user experience!