Trigger a button click on the Enter key in a text box misses its value

Question

I have

Html:

<form  action="" method="post"  id="contactForm">
    <input id='inputbox' name="inputbox" type="text" />
    <button type="button" id='search'> search </button>
</form>

JavaScript

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("#inputbox").keyup(function(event){
        if(event.keyCode == 13){
            $("#search").click();
        }
    });

    $('#search').click(function(){
         var inputbox= $("#inputbox").val();  
        //stuff
    });
});

inputbox value is nothing when I press enter, however if I click on button It works perfectly with same input value

maybe making inputbox global?

Did you try `event.which` instead of `event.keyCode` ? Did you prevent the form from submitting! — adeneo, Mar 29 '13 at 19:18
@Titanium - Nope, jQuery [normalizes event.which](http://api.jquery.com/category/events/event-object/), but not keyCode. — adeneo, Mar 29 '13 at 19:28
That's what I meant - jQuery normalises it. The point is, you don't have to worry about it. See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4471582/javascript-keycode-vs-which — Oliver Tappin, Mar 29 '13 at 20:19

metadept · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-29T19:33:05.327

The problem is that the enter key defaults to submitting your form, even without a submit button. So you should block the submission by changing the event binding to keypress and using event.preventDefault(), like this:

$("#inputbox").keypress(function(event){
    if(event.keyCode == 13){
        event.preventDefault();
        $("#search").click();
    }
});

Alternatively, you could use .submit() to trigger your function, change the input type to submit, and avoid separate handling for keys and clicks.

HTML:

<form action="" method="post" id="contactForm">
    <input id='inputbox' name="inputbox" type="text" />
    <input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

JavaScript:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("#contactForm").submit(submitSearch);
}); 

function submitSearch(event) {
     event.preventDefault();

     //do other stuff
     alert($("#inputbox").val());
}

Trigger a button click on the Enter key in a text box misses its value

Html:

JavaScript

1 Answers1