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

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.

Answer 2

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 3

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 4

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 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.