When asking users for their input, it’s often a pleasant user experience to allow them to submit the form by pressing “Enter”.
In fact, that’s the default behavior if using the <form> element:
<body>
<div>
<form>
<div>
<span id=“empty”></span>
<label for=“first-name”>Your Name</label>
<input name=“first-name” type=“text” />
</div>
<button id=“submitBtn”>
Click to see the magic!
</button>
</form>
</div>
</body>
<script>
function handleSubmit(e) {
e.preventDefault()
console.log(`clicked`)
document.getElementById(“empty”).innerHTML = ‘filled!’
}
document.getElementById(“submitBtn”).addEventListener(“click”, handleSubmit);
</script>
With the above form, you could press enter in the first-name input or the button - in both cases, you’ll get to “filled!” Appear.
Unfortunately, breaking this default behavior is rather easy to do - particularly for the sake of design.
So, imagine instead that you have a <form> with its inputs and a button that lives outside of that form.
How do you allow the user the same ease of input?
Very similarly to how we added the event listener for click - except now we’re going to look for keyup and we’re going to be listening on the entire form.
<body>
<div>
<form id=“awesome-form”>
<!--...No changes-->
</form>
</div>
</body>
<script>
// ... no changes
document.getElementById(“awesome-form”).addEventListener(“keyup”, handleSubmit);
</script>
This works… too well.
There are two problems:
- We’re firing
handleClickfor any keyup. We only want it to happen onEnter. - The form currently has no validation, so even if the form had errors, by pressing a key (or ‘Enter’ if the above is addressed), we’d try to submit.
For the former, we should add a condition to our handleSubmit to only fire if we press the Enter key2, for example:
function handleClick(e) {
e.preventDefault()
if (e.keyCode === 13 ) {
console.log(`clicked`)
document.getElementById(“empty”).innerHTML = ‘filled!’
}
}
Remember how I said I like React? This same thing in react would just be:
function handleClick(e) {
e.preventDefault()
if (e.key === ‘Enter ) {
console.log(`clicked`)
// do whatever you want here, but it probably won’t be getting a document by its ID.
}
}
And then you could pass this function as a prop to the keyUp value.
For the latter, it’s good practice to validate your form.
If validation is present, then it would be a matter of adding that as a condition to firing the function. E.g.,
const valid = true // put in the conditions here
function handleClick(e) {
e.preventDefault()
if (e.keyCode === 13 && valid) {
console.log(`clicked`)
document.getElementById(“empty”).innerHTML = ‘filled!’
}
}
For form management (including validation), I like Formik. It took me a few forms worth of practice to understand how the validation works, but once I did I realized how intuitive and pleasant it is.
Now, I can just check to make sure there are no errors in my form and if everything’s good, fire off my handle submit if the user presses the enter key.
Footnotes
- Since v0.11, React supports event normalization. Instead of having to type in the key id, you can say
event.key === ‘Enter’orenter.key === ‘ArrowLeft’, etc. React v0.11 – React Blog - 2 Each key has a code. Enter happens to be number 13 in Javascript. Javascript Char Codes (Key Codes) | Cambia Research
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