Detect left of right Shift key in keyboard - JavaScript

Question

I'm using the below code to check whether the user have pressed the 'shift' key. It returns 16 correctly, since its the keycode for 'shift'.

But is there any way we can detect whether the pressed shift is the left or right one in the keyboard?

Here is the code I've used:

$(document).keydown(function (e) {
    if (e.keyCode == 16) {
        alert(e.which + " or Shift was pressed");
    }
});

Yes it is possible. Check out this thread for the answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22029033/can-javascript-tell-the-difference-between-left-and-right-shift-key — Eric Wiener, Oct 27 '16 at 01:31

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 27 '16 at 01:37

For JQuery in particular, if you just look at your event e you will find

e.originalEvent.code

Which contains shiftLeft or shiftRight depending.

I'd guess originalEvent is actually the base javascript keypress event you could get from something like

body.onkeydown = function (e) { console.log(e); }

since it looks identical.

1 Answers1