How to register document.onkeypress event

Question

I want to register keypress events for a document using javascript.

I have used:

document.attachEvent("onkeydown", my_onkeydown_handler);

It works fine with IE, but not with Firefox and Chrome.

I also tried:

document.addEventListener("onkeydown", my_onkeydown_handler, true); 
// (with false value also)

But it still doesn't work with Firefox and Chrome.

Is there a solution, am I missing something?

Solution 1

You are looking for:

EDIT:

Javascript:

document.addEventListener("keydown", keyDownTextField, false);

function keyDownTextField(e) {
var keyCode = e.keyCode;
  if(keyCode==13) {
  alert("You hit the enter key.");
  } else {
  alert("Oh no you didn't.");
  }
}

DEMO: JSFIDDLE

Solution 2

You are probably looking for:

document.body.addEventListener('keydown', function (e) {
    alert('hello world');
});​​​​​​​

But it is almost certainly going to be worth your time to use an existing library to abstract over the problems of the many browsers out there.

Comments

[UltraInstinct]

Possible answer here

[Nilesh Pethani]

i want to add event to document itself

[multitask landscape]

What problems? Why do you then give the solution which can't be used in real application?

[Lucas Green]

@AndriiNemchenko because the solution which can be used in a real application is built from this, and has already dealt with the problems. I can't evaluate what library they should use, but I can show them something they could use to build the solution and warn them it is hard.