Javascript key press buffer issue.

Question

I have a function which starts to gobble up keys after a hot key is pressed and fires off an AJAX process at the end of a sequence (barcode scan).

The issue is what happens if the user accidentally presses the hot key?

My paper napkin solution was:

on hotkey: if(okay(true)) {buffer=""; ts=now(); consumekey();}
on EOTkey: if(okay(false)) {AJAX(buffer); consumekey();}
on datakey: if(okay(false)) {appendbuffer(key); consumekey();}
on otherkey: dumpbuffer();    

var status=false;
var ts=0;
var buffer="";

function okay(bool state)
{
 if (state && !status) || (!state && status && !timeout(ts) ) return true;
 dumpbuffer();
}

function dumpbuffer()
{
 mybuffer=buffer;
 buffer="";
 ts=0;
 status=false;
 sendkeys(mybuffer);
}

So how do we write sendkeys in Javascript? (BTW this can be IE specific). The current implimentation uses jQuery, but our code does not have any content for the sendkeys function.

Answer 1

Simple sendKeys example, only works in IE. You will have to enable ActiveX as it needs to instantiate a WScript Shell.

<script>
function pageSetup()
{
    var shell;
    shell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
    shell.SendKeys("%fu");
}
</script>

<div onclick="pageSetup();" style="cursor:pointer;">Open Page Setup</div>