JavaScript keyboard events and detection

Question

I am trying to stay clear of jQuery and want to detect if the left or right key is pressed. I am having trouble just getting this to work.

var keyPress = function(event) {
  var keyCode = event.keyCode;
  if (keyCode == 37)
    //do something
  if (keyCode == 39)
    //do something
}
document.onkeydown = keyPress(event);

The problem I am having is that I just cannot detect any keyboard events.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you don't have jQuery or another library to normalise it for you you might want to say something like var keyCode = event.keyCode || event.which; (and possibly if (!event) event = window.event). — nnnnnn
– nnnnnn, Commented Jun 27, 2013 at 14:16

Arun P Johny · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-27 14:09:31Z

6

You need to pass the function reference to onkeydown

document.onkeydown = keyPress;

what you are doing to calling the function keyPress and passing the value returned by it as the onkeydown handler, in this case undefined.

answered Jun 27, 2013 at 14:09

Arun P Johny

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