How to set an event for "Enter" pressed while cursor is inside a textbox within usercontrol.

Question

Hi, I have a usercontrol which is used for searching. There is a textbox and a search button. When the button is clicked the search method is called. I want the search also to occur when the cursor is inside the textbox and the enter key is pressed.

My first thought on how to do this was maybe to add the event to submit action of the form tag. However this usercontrol has no form tag.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

Answer 1

By default, if a user clicks Enter while in a textbox, the form is posted, triggering a postback. Therefore:

Make this happen in the ontextchanged event. Here's about the easiest code sample ever written:

 <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" ontextchanged="TextBox1_TextChanged"></asp:TextBox>
 <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" onclick="Button1_Click" Text="Button" />
 <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label>

and in code-behind:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    SomeFunctionForHandlingEvents();
}
 protected void TextBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    SomeFunctionForHandlingEvents();
}
private void SomeFunctionForHandlingEvents()
{
     Label1.Text = "event called";
}

Answer 2

I would do it using JavaScript: attach an OnKeyPress handler that looks for key code 13, and calls form.submit:

function enterPressed(evn) {
if (window.event && window.event.keyCode == 13) {
  document.forms[0].submit;
} else if (evn && evn.keyCode == 13) {
  document.forms[0].submit;
}
}
document.onkeypress = enterPressed;

Answer 3

Are you running on a web page or locally? Hitting Enter in a textbox usually moves you to the next field locally so you could use the OnLeave event (I think that's its name). On a web page Enter will usually submit the form which is exactly what you want. Grab the new value from the TextChanged event.