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Press Shift and Enter for a new line

Written byPhuoc Nguyen
Created
01 Apr, 2020
Category
Level 1 — Basic
By default, pressing `Enter` or `Shift` and `Enter` will generate a new line for a textarea element.
In some cases such as an inline editable element, or a messaging application, you would like to submit the data when user presses `Enter`. The only way to generate a new line is to press `Shift` and `Enter`.
Assume that we have the following textarea element:
html
<textarea id="message"></textarea>
To prevent the default behavior of pressing the `Enter` key, we can handle the `keydown` event:
js
const ele = document.getElementById('message');

ele.addEventListener('keydown', function (e) {
// Get the code of pressed key
const keyCode = e.which || e.keyCode;

// 13 represents the Enter key
if (keyCode === 13 && !e.shiftKey) {
// Don't generate a new line
e.preventDefault();

// Do something else such as send the message to back-end
// ...
}
});
In the demo below, pressing `Enter` will do nothing:

Demo

See also

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Phước Nguyễn