Javascript – Enter triggers button click

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I have a page with two buttons. One is a <button> element and the other is a <input type="submit">. The buttons appear on the page in that order. If I'm in a text field anywhere in the form and press <Enter>, the button element's click event is triggered. I assume that's because the button element sits first.

I can't find anything that looks like a reliable way of setting the default button, nor do I necessarily want to at this point. In the absence of anything better, I've captured a keypress anywhere on the form and, if it was the <Enter> key that was pressed, I'm just negating it:

$('form').keypress( function( e ) {
  var code = e.keyCode || e.which;

  if( code === 13 ) {
    e.preventDefault();
    return false; 
  }
})

As far as I can tell so far, it seems to be working, but it feels incredibly ham-fisted.

Does anyone know of a more sophisticated technique for doing this?

Similarly, are there any pitfalls to this solution that I'm just not aware of?

Thanks.

Best Answer

Using

<button type="button">Whatever</button>

should do the trick.

The reason is because a button inside a form has its type implicitly set to submit. As zzzzBoz says, the Spec says that the first button or input with type="submit" is what is triggered in this situation. If you specifically set type="button", then it's removed from consideration by the browser.

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Javascript – How to detect a click outside an element

Note: Using stopPropagation is something that should be avoided as it breaks normal event flow in the DOM. See this CSS Tricks article for more information. Consider using this method instead.

Attach a click event to the document body which closes the window. Attach a separate click event to the container which stops propagation to the document body.

$(window).click(function() {
  //Hide the menus if visible
});

$('#menucontainer').click(function(event){
  event.stopPropagation();
});

Javascript – Trigger a button click with JavaScript on the Enter key in a text box

In jQuery, the following would work:

$("#id_of_textbox").keyup(function(event) {
    if (event.keyCode === 13) {
        $("#id_of_button").click();
    }
});

$("#pw").keyup(function(event) {
    if (event.keyCode === 13) {
        $("#myButton").click();
    }
});

$("#myButton").click(function() {
  alert("Button code executed.");
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Username:<input id="username" type="text"><br>
Password:&nbsp;<input id="pw" type="password"><br>
<button id="myButton">Submit</button>

Or in plain JavaScript, the following would work:

document.getElementById("id_of_textbox")
    .addEventListener("keyup", function(event) {
    event.preventDefault();
    if (event.keyCode === 13) {
        document.getElementById("id_of_button").click();
    }
});

document.getElementById("pw")
    .addEventListener("keyup", function(event) {
    event.preventDefault();
    if (event.keyCode === 13) {
        document.getElementById("myButton").click();
    }
});

function buttonCode()
{
  alert("Button code executed.");
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Username:<input id="username" type="text"><br>
Password:&nbsp;<input id="pw" type="password"><br>
<button id="myButton" onclick="buttonCode()">Submit</button>

Best Answer

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Javascript – How to detect a click outside an element

Javascript – Trigger a button click with JavaScript on the Enter key in a text box

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