I have a Javascript function listening to keydown events and performs according to the key pressed.

My problem is as follows:

In Chrome, when I press "ö", which is a Turkish character with keyCode 246, event.keyCode returns 188 which is the code of the ma (,) character. (Firefox returns 0 but this is not problem for me since it is different from the ma.)

So my question is how can I distinguish character "ö" from the ma in Chrome? Or is there a way to get the original keyCode 246 on keydown event?

Thanks in advance.

I have a Javascript function listening to keydown events and performs according to the key pressed.

My problem is as follows:

In Chrome, when I press "ö", which is a Turkish character with keyCode 246, event.keyCode returns 188 which is the code of the ma (,) character. (Firefox returns 0 but this is not problem for me since it is different from the ma.)

So my question is how can I distinguish character "ö" from the ma in Chrome? Or is there a way to get the original keyCode 246 on keydown event?

Thanks in advance.

• javascript
• google-chrome
• keycode

• Hmm, in Chrome "ö".charCodeAt(0) returns 246? If you print the character to the console, is it a ma or the ö? – altschuler Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:16
• Why not use event.charCode on keypress? – Bergi Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:16
• "ö".charCodeAt(0) returns 246 for me also on Chrome v28.0.XX. Which Chrome version are you testing with? (ps.: Firefox 21.0 and 22.0 returns 246 also). – RaphaelDDL Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:22
• Definitive reading: unixpapa./js/key.html. You are confusing the code for the key (as in "keyboard") with the charCode from the character table. – Bergi Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:22
• I'm using Chromium version 18.0.1025.168 on Ubuntu 11.10. I know that the keypress event returns 246. However I have to handle the keydown event. – ovunccetin Commented Jul 8, 2013 at 14:33

3 Answers 3

If you want to get the ASCII code you have to listen to the keypress event and use event.charCode.

The keydown event does not provide the charCode since there is a little difference between these two event types:

In theory, the keydown and keyup events represent keys being pressed or released, while the keypress event represents a character being typed. The implementation of the theory is not same in all browsers.

Source

You should use event.originalEvent.keyIdentifier method. "ö" and ma has different keyIdentifiers.

Here is a good answer for these kind of problems. I see two rules here:

• to detect a character typed reliably, use keypress (with charCode)
• to detect non-printable characters such as arrows, use keydown (with keyCode)