Question

I tried with keydown and keypress but both fire constantly if the user holds a key. Is there a way to listen only for the when the user presses the key (changes from not pressed to pressed) so that eg: holding the key fires the code once and pressing it, releasing it and pressing it again 2 times?

This is what I’m using to check which keys are down:

$(document).keydown(function (e){
    console.log(e.which);
});

Answer 1

You could, on the first call of keydown, unbind the keydown handler and then rebind it on keyup.

// keydown is bound at load
$(document).keydown(function (e){
    // Call function
    doStuff();
});

// keyup rebinds the keydown event.
$(document).keyup(function(e) {
   $(document).keydown(function(e) {
     doStuff();
   });
});

// The function called on keydown does something
// and then unbinds the keydown event
function doStuff() {
   console.log("Doing stuff");
   // And unbind it...
    $(document).unbind('keydown');
}

http://jsfiddle.net/cbSRu/2/