How to Check if an Enter Key is Pressed with jQuery

As a web developer, it’s common to have a form where users need to input data.

Often, you may want to execute some code when the user presses the Enter key in a text field.

In this Javascript tutorial, we will learn how to check if the Enter key is pressed with jQuery.

jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library.

It makes things like HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, and animation much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers.

Here is the code to check if the Enter key is pressed:

$(document).on("keypress", function(event) {
  if (event.which === 13) {
    alert("Enter key pressed");
  }
});

In the code above, we used the keypress event to bind a function to the document.

This function will be executed every time a key is pressed.

Then, we used the which property of the event object to determine which key was pressed.

The which property returns the ASCII code of the key pressed.

In our case, we are checking if the value is 13, which is the ASCII code for the Enter key.

If the Enter key is pressed, the function will display an alert with the message “Enter key pressed.”

You can replace the alert with any action you want to perform when the Enter key is pressed.

Using this code, you can check for the Enter key press on any element, not just the document.

For example, you can bind the function to a specific text field:

$("#textfield").on("keypress", function(event) {
  if (event.which === 13) {
    alert("Enter key pressed");
  }
});

In this code, we used the #textfield selector to bind the function to the text field with an ID of “textfield”.

Now, the function will be executed only when the Enter key is pressed in this text field.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to check if the Enter key is pressed with jQuery.

The keypress event and the which property make it easy to detect the Enter key press in your web application.

Whether you’re working on a form or any other type of user input, knowing how to check for the Enter key press can be a useful tool in your web development arsenal.