Handle Key Press Events

Category: JavaScript

Key press events on a physical keyboard such as keydown, keypress, and keyup generate a code.

To handle these events, add a key listener to the window:

window.addEventListener('keydown', onKeyDown);

Use the following to print out the key code when a keydown event is generated:

const onKeyDown = (event: any) => {
  console.log(`Event code ${event.code}`);
}

For example:

The L key will generate a key code of KeyL
The 2 key will generate a key code of Number2
The left Shift key will generate a key code of ShiftLeft

The ASCII value for the key event can be shown using event.keyCode which returns an integer. For example, the letter a returns a value of 65.