jQuery: Filter out non-printable keypress events

Its pretty handy to listen in for keydown, keyup and keypress events, but it also listens in for a bunch of stuff that, most of the time, we're really not interested in (such as ESC, Tab, F1-F12, backspace, CTRL+C, ALT+Tab, etc).

To filter out those extra triggers we don't need, add the following check at the start of your event handler:

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1.// Filter out special keys

2.if (e.charCode && !e.originalEvent.altKey && !e.originalEvent.ctrlKey) {

3.  alert('OK');

4.}

5.else {

6.  alert('DUD');

7.}

"e.charCode" will excluse the majority of the non printable keypresses. If you want to keep a specific key (such as backspace, which is useful for searching), then use the following snippet to check for the corresponding key code you want.

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1.var code = (e.keyCode || e.which);

This ensures its compatible with more browsers.