I need to set up an <input type="text" />
so that it will accept only numeric chars, backspace, delete, enter, tabs and arrows.
There's a lot of exemple around there, i started with something similar to this:
function isNumericKeyCode (keyCode){
return ( (keyCode >= 48 && keyCode <= 57) //standard keyboard
||(keyCode >= 96 && keyCode <= 105)) //Numpad
}
$('#myTextBox').keydown(function(e){
var handled = true;
var keyCode = e.keyCode;
switch(keyCode){
//Enter and arrows
case 13:
case 37:
case 38:
case 39:
case 40:
doSomethingSpecialsWithThesesKeys();
break;
default:
handled = false;
break;
}
if ( !handled
&& keyCode !== 8 //backspace
&& keyCode !== 9 //tab
&& keyCode !== 46 //del
&& !isNumericKeyCode(keyCode)){
handled = true;
}
return handled;
});
All that worked perfectly until I hit the "#" key. In my french canadian keyboard, the "#" has his own key (no shift implied) that returns keyCode 51, the same as the number "3".
I think that in US keyboard, the "#" is obtained by pressing shift+3, that may be why they have the same keycode.
Now I realize that I have to handle the shift and alt keys too, but that's another story.
It works differently with the jquery keypress event, which offer the charCode property, but I did not used it at first because of what the documentation says :
as the keypress event isn't covered by any official specification, the actual behavior encountered when using it may differ across browsers, browser versions, and platforms.
Also, I would need a workaround in that case to handle tabs, arrows and other special keys since they don't provide a charCode.
So the question is : is there a way to allow only some specifics chars using the keydown event? And that, in a way that will work independently of the keyboard layout?
As a side quest : Which browsers may be problematics with the keypress event? I mean, currently I don't really care if my website does not support IE6. I am targetting recent browsers.
Edit
As someone pointed out in the comments, this method does not allow user to "ctrl+v" a number in the input. In my particular case this is really not a requirement to be able to paste a number. But this popped something in my head, the user still can right-clic > copy some text in the input, and in that case that could be anything. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that I will need the keydown
event to handle tabs and arrows, and another event to handle the input itself.
Edit2
A lot of beautiful answers here, but the award goes to mrtsherman for the use of input
and propertychange
events. I will use a combination of this answer for the numeric validation, plus the keyCode
event as before for the special use of arrows, tabs and enter keys.