Question

I have a web page and I need to intercept all keypresses before they get dispatched to whatever element in the dom has the focus. When the user types something like ~goto:/index.html: (which in fact will come from a barcode scanner) I need to capture the key presses after the ~ to parse them once I get to the second :. I’ve managed to get something with the $(document).keypress() as follows:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $(document).keypress(function(e) {
    // do the processing here and 
    // return false when ignoring keystrokes
  });
});

The problem is that I get the keypress after it has gone to the focussed element. Anyway to get it before so that I can in fact reject it?

Answer 1

You will probably have better luck with keydown it should fire before the event

also do this

$(document).keydown(function(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
});

calling preventDefault will stop normal process of the key press. Actually, you may be able to stay with keypress and just use the preventDefault to finish your interception needs.