Javascript: Enter for submit

Question

Hello this is what i have in the head of my file:

function entsub(event)
 {
 if (event && event.which == 13) 
 write1();
 else
 return true;
 }

and in the body, my form is:

<form id="writeform" name="writeform">
 Message: <br />
 <textarea name="message" rows="3" id="message" style="width:90%;" onkeypress="return entsub(event)"></textarea>
 <br />
 <input name="send" type="button" id="send" value="Send" onclick="write1()" />
 <span id="sent"></span>
 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <input type="reset" value="Reset" />
 </form>

I need to make it work that when i press enter when i am in the textarea, it does not make a new line but send it [see my <input type="button">]

But it won't work! It keeps making a new line... Using IE8 now.

Answer 1

Well i'm not sure what write1() does, but it would be prudent to return false when the condition is met..

function entsub(event)
{
 if (event && event.keyCode == 13) {
 write1();
 return false; //Return false to prevent default execution
 //Some browsers use event.preventDefault() etc.
 }else{
 return true;
 }
}

Answer 2

Usually the cross browser test is the following:

function entsub(e) {
 if ((e.which && e.which == 13) || (e.keyCode && e.keyCode == 13)) {
 write1();
 } 
 return true;
}

Answer 3

If you want to use jquery, you can do this:

 $(document).ready(function() {
 $("#txtTest").keypress(function(e) {
 var code = (e.keyCode ? e.keyCode : e.which);
 if (code == 13) {
 doSomething();
 return false;
 }
 });
 });
 function doSomething() {
 alert("I did it!");
 }

where txtTest is the id of your textarea.

Answer 4

Use keyCode instead of which.

Depending on the browser, you need to prevent the default action. Check out event.cancelBubble and event.returnValue for IE and event.stopPropagation() and event.preventDefault() for Firefox.

• Deniz Zoeteman: it is my accepted answer, still i did not need those other stuff, just keyCode.

Answer 5

For a non-js related way, I'm pretty sure you can just use an input of type="submit" and it will use enter to submit the form. At that point, you would just move your event to onsubmit.

Answer 6

A cleaner way is to change to <input type="button"> to <input type="submit"> and move the onclick="..." to a onsubmit="..." on the form. This would not require so much error-prone JavaScript and would work in more cases.

• Deniz Zoeteman: the problem is that if i would do that, it wont send it. Do not know why, got this code from some guy.