lib/rotjs-library/manual/pages/keyboard.html

<h2>Keyboard handling</h2>

<p>Taking care of user input boils down to listening for proper keyboard events (<em>keydown</em>, <em>keypress</em>, <em>keyup</em>) and processing them. <code>rot.js</code> does not offer any support methods or objects; instead, it defines a large set of <code>ROT.VK_*</code> constants to distinguish between pressed keys. For a complete listing, please check out the <a href="../doc/symbols/ROT.html">generated docs</a>.</p>

<p>There are also several general keyboard-related JavaScript guidelines:</p>

<ol>
	<li><em>keydown</em> and <en>keyup</em> events correspond to physical keys. Check their <code>keyCode</code> property and compare with <code>ROT.VK_*</code> constants.</li>
	<li><em>keypress</em> event corresponds to a printable character being generated. Check its <code>charCode</code> property; <code>String.fromCharCode(x)</code> will create the corresponding character.</li>
	<li>Your mileage may vary across different browsers.</li>
</ol>

<p>A very simple keyboard handler is shown below:</p>

<div class="example">
var input = document.createElement("input");
var out1 = document.createElement("div");
var out2 = document.createElement("div");
SHOW(input, out1, out2);
input.focus();

input.addEventListener("keydown", function(e) {
	var code = e.keyCode;

	var vk = "?"; /* find the corresponding constant */
	for (var name in ROT) {
		if (ROT[name] == code &amp;&amp; name.indexOf("VK_") == 0) { vk = name; }
	}

	out1.innerHTML = "Keydown: code is " + code + " (" + vk + ")";
});

input.addEventListener("keypress", function(e) {
	var code = e.charCode;
	var ch = String.fromCharCode(code);
	out2.innerHTML = "Keypress: char is " + ch;
});
</div>