Preventing "Enter" from submitting form, but allow it on textarea fields (jQuery)

jeffkee picture jeffkee · Mar 12, 2012 · Viewed 13.1k times · Source
$(window).keydown(function(event){
    if(event.keyCode == 13) {
      event.preventDefault();
      return false;
    }
  });

The above is the code I got which effectively kills the "enter" key as a form submitter throughout the system, which is exactly what I want. However, the enter key is also disabled on textarea tags - which the users should be able to hit enter on in order to go to the next rows. So is there a way to modify the above code to detect IF the enter is coming from within a textarea tag, it doesn't run the event.preventDefault(); line?

I have so many forms throughout the site - having to configure them individually would be a nightmare, and probably doesn't make sense - there's gotta be a universal way. The above code runs on every single page of the site to prevent accidental submits by hitting "enter".

Answer

Rafay picture Rafay · Mar 12, 2012

i would prefer the keyup event ... use the event.target property

$(window).keydown(function(event){
    if((event.which== 13) && ($(event.target)[0]!=$("textarea")[0])) {
      event.preventDefault();
      return false;
    }
  });

demo