Capturing "Delete" Keypress with jQuery

jquery keypress
Shane H picture Shane H · Jul 12, 2009 · Viewed 131.2k times · Source

When using the example code from the jQuery documentation for the keypress event handler, I'm unable to capture the Delete key. The snippet below is going to log 0 when the Delete key is pressed in FireFox: 

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

Seems there's gotta be a way to capture the Delete key, but it's an ambiguous term so Google isn't proving to be much help with it.

Answer

Philippe Leybaert picture Philippe Leybaert · Jul 12, 2009

You shouldn't use the keypress event, but the keyup or keydown event because the keypress event is intended for real (printable) characters. keydown is handled at a lower level so it will capture all nonprinting keys like delete and enter.

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