Handle the keyboard like a Pro with easykeyjs

After being asked once again to add some keyboard shortcuts to a web application, and being tired of doing things like:

$(document).keydown(function(e){
    if (e.which == 13) //enter
    reloadResults();
   else if (e.which == 37) //left arrow
    previousPage();
   else if (e.which == 39) //right page
    nextPage();
}); 

I decided it would be nice if I could write instead something like this:

$(document)
    .onEnterKeyDown(reloadResults)
    .onLeftArrowKeyDown(previousPage)
    .onRightArrowKeyDown(nextPage);

I looked around, and although there are plenty of libraries to handle keyboard input, none had a syntax like this. Because of this I created easykeyjs.

Here are a few examples of how to use it:

Register an event handler for when F11 is pressed on an element with id="myInput" while preventing the browser from going to full screen mode:

$('#myInput').onF11KeyDown(function(e) {
    //do something in response to F11 being pressed
    e.preventDefault(); //prevent the browser from going full screen
    //e.stopPropagation(); //prevent the event from bubbling up, if you want to do both, just return false;
});

Register an event handler for pressing “Control + s”:

$(document).onSKeyDown(save, $.easyKey.options.withControlPressed);

Register an event handler for releasing “Control + s”:

$(document).onSKeyUp(printSaved, $.easyKey.options.withControlPressed);

Register an event handler for “Control + Alt + Shift + a”:

$(document).onAKeyDown(selectAll, 
        $.easyKey.options.withControlPressed 
        | $.easyKey.options.withAltPressed 
        | $.easyKey.options.withShiftPressed);

Register an event handler for i that runs both on key down and then on key up:

$(document).onKey($.easyKey.keyCodes.i,
            function(e) { $('#myInput').toggleClass("highlight"); }, 
            $.easyKey.options.onKeyDown | $.easyKey.options.onKeyUp);

To run this you need jQuery (any recent version should be fine, jQuery 1.4+).

Go download easykeyjs from here.

The github repo is here.