You can Get Unicode Value of Pressed Keyboard Key using JavaScript with the help of keyCode property or KeyboardEvent which Property.
Table of Contents
keyCode property
keyCode property returns the unicode value of the key that has triggered the onkeypress, onkeydown or onkeyup event.
For normal keyboard keys like alphabets or numbers use onkeypress event with keyCode property and for special function keys like CTRL, ALT etc, use keyCode property with onkeyup event or onkeydown.
Firefox browser doesn't support keyCode property, so we can use which property for it.
HTML Code
The HTML code is given below.
<input type="text" onkeypress="getUnicode(event)">
JavaScript Code
The JavaScript code is given below.
<script>
function getUnicode(event) {
var x = event.keyCode;
x="Unicode value is "+x;
alert(x);
}
</script>
KeyboardEvent which Property
KeyboardEvent which Property also returns the unicode of the key pressed just like the keyCode property.
IE8 and earlier versions of Internet Explorer don't support which property so we can use keyCode property for them.
HTML Code
The HTML code is given below.
<input type="text" onkeypress="getUnicode(event)">
JavaScript Code
The JavaScript code is given below.
<script>
function getUnicode(event) {
var x = event.which;
x="Unicode value is "+x;
alert(x);
}
</script>
Using Both keyCode and which Property
We can use both keyCode and which property simultaneously so that the code runs on all types of browsers, see the code below.
<script>
function getUnicode(event) {
var x = event.which || event.keyCode;
x="Unicode value is "+x;
alert(x);
}
</script>
Demo
Video Tutorial
Watch video tutorial on how to get value of unicode of the pressed key of keyboard.