Question

I am trying to retrieve the character inserted into a textfield/input with jQuery.

I use the usual:

var character = String.fromCharCode( e.keyCode || e.which );

method, but the only problem occurs when I use a different keyboard layout which I just noticed.

So for example, on a Standard US Keyboard it works perfectly. On a German Keyboard for instanece, if I have the language set to English – basically rendering it a standard US Keyboard, when I press the characters equivalent to :;'\,./[]=-, I get the German characters I actually see on my keyboard (although the English equivalent of then is added to the input).

Example: if I console.log( character ) for the folowing sentence I get:

• In the input: []\';/.,
• In the console: ÛݺÞܼ¾¿

My obvious question is, how can I make sure to get the true character inserter?

Answer 1

The keypress event is different from the keyup and keydown events as it contains the key actually pressed. Try using that instead. Check it out with this snippet:

$('body').keypress(function(e){
  console.log('keypress', String.fromCharCode( e.which ));
});
$('body').keyup(function(e){
  console.log('keyup', String.fromCharCode( e.which ));
});