How to detect pressing Enter on keyboard using jQuery?

Question

I would like to detect whether the user has pressed Enter using jQuery.

How is this possible? Does it require a plugin?

EDIT: It looks like I need

Answer 1

A minor extension of Andrea's answer above makes the helper method more useful when you may also want to capture modified enter presses (i.e. ctrl-enter or shift-enter). For example, this variant allows binding like:

$('textarea').enterKey(function() {$(this).closest('form').submit(); }, 'ctrl')

to submit a form when the user presses ctrl-enter with focus on that form's textarea.

$.fn.enterKey = function (fnc, mod) {
    return this.each(function () {
        $(this).keypress(function (ev) {
            var keycode = (ev.keyCode ? ev.keyCode : ev.which);
            if ((keycode == '13' || keycode == '10') && (!mod || ev[mod + 'Key'])) {
                fnc.call(this, ev);
            }
        })
    })
}

(see also Ctrl+Enter jQuery in TEXTAREA)

Answer 2

Use event.key and modern JS!

$(document).keypress(function(event) {
    if (event.key === "Enter") {
        // Do something
    }
});

or without jQuery:

document.addEventListener("keypress", function onEvent(event) {
    if (event.key === "Enter") {
        // Do something better
    }
});

Mozilla Docs

Supported Browsers

Answer 3

There's a keypress() event method. The Enter key's ascii number is 13 and is not dependent on which browser is being used.

Answer 4

$(document).keyup(function(e) {
    if(e.key === 'Enter') {
        //Do the stuff
    }
});

Answer 5

$(document).keydown(function (event) {
      //proper indentiation of keycode and which to be equal to 13.
    if ( (event.keyCode || event.which) === 13) {
        // Cancel the default action, if needed
        event.preventDefault();
        //call function, trigger events and everything tou want to dd . ex : Trigger the button element with a click
        $("#btnsearch").trigger('click');
    }
});

Answer 6

I found this to be more cross-browser compatible:

$(document).keypress(function(event) {
    var keycode = event.keyCode || event.which;
    if(keycode == '13') {
        alert('You pressed a "enter" key in somewhere');    
    }
});