JQuery or [removed] How determine if shift key being pressed while clicking anchor tag hyperlink?

Question

I have an anchor tag that calls a JavaScript function.

With or without JQuery how do I determine if the shift key is down while the link is clicked?

The foll

Answer 1

For mouse events, I know that in Firefox at least the "shiftKey" property on the event object will tell you if the shift key is down. It's documented at MSDN but I haven't tried it in forever so I don't recall if IE does this right.

Thus you should be able to check for "shiftKey" on the event object in your "click" handler.

Answer 2

I have used a method to test if any specific key is pressed by storing the currently pressed key codes in an array:

var keysPressed = [],
    shiftCode = 16;

$(document).on("keyup keydown", function(e) {
    switch(e.type) {
        case "keydown" :
            keysPressed.push(e.keyCode);
            break;
        case "keyup" :
            var idx = keysPressed.indexOf(e.keyCode);
            if (idx >= 0)
                keysPressed.splice(idx, 1);
            break;
    }
});

$("a.shifty").on("click", function(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    console.log("Shift Pressed: " + (isKeyPressed(shiftCode) ? "true" : "false"));
});

function isKeyPressed(code) {
    return keysPressed.indexOf(code) >= 0;
}

Here is the jsfiddle

Answer 3

This works great for me:

function listenForShiftKey(e){
    var evt = e || window.event;
    if (evt.shiftKey) {
      shiftKeyDown = true;
    } else {
      shiftKeyDown = false;
    }
}

Answer 4

    $(document).on('keyup keydown', function(e){shifted = e.shiftKey} );

Answer 5

The excellent JavaScript library KeyboardJS handles all types of key presses including the SHIFT key. It even allows specifying key combinations such as first pressing CTRL+x and then a.

KeyboardJS.on('shift', function() { ...handleDown... }, function() { ...handleUp... });

If you want a simple version, head to the answer by @tonycoupland):

var shiftHeld = false;
$('#control').on('mousedown', function (e) { shiftHeld = e.shiftKey });

Answer 6

For checking if the shiftkey is pressed while clicking with the mouse, there is an exact property in the click event object: shiftKey (and also for ctrl and alt and meta key): https://www.w3schools.com/jsref/event_shiftkey.asp

So using jQuery:

$('#anchor').on('click', function (e) {
    if (e.shiftKey) {
        // your code
    }
});