Keyhandler

Handle keyboard shortcuts in your React components, and automatically show hints to users.

Install

# With yarn:
yarn add @chassis-wp/keyhandler

# With npm:
npm install --save @chassis-wp/keyhandler

Usage

To use Keyhandler, first render the Keyhandler provider at the top-level of your tree. This provider should be rendered above any Keyhandler components.

import { Provider } from '@chassis-wp/keyhandler';

ReactDOM.render(
	<Provider>
		<App />
	</Provider>,
	document.getElementById( 'root' )
);

Then, wherever you want to register a keyboard shortcut, render a KeyHandler component.

import React from 'react';

import KeyHandler from '@chassis-wp/keyhandler';

function SaveButton( props ) {
	return (
		<button
			className="SaveButton"
			type="button"
			onClick={ props.onSave }
		>
			<KeyHandler
				shortcut="cmd+s"
				onTrigger={ props.onSave }
			/>

			Save
		</button>
	);
}

Shortcuts

The shortcut prop specifies the combination of keyboard characters to press in order to trigger your callback.

Shortcuts are specified as a string, with optional modifiers separated by plus (+) characters. cmd, ctrl, and shift are supported as modifiers; alt is not supported due to inconsistent behaviour across platforms.

Symbols are supported, but note that the shift modifier has no effect, as many keyboards place multiple symbols on the same physical key; instead, use the character directly (e.g. ? instead of shift+/).

The following special keys are also supported:

escape (or esc)
enter
delete
backspace
space
up, down, left, right

Sequences are not currently supported.

Hints

Keyhandler by default renders hints when the meta key (Cmd on macOS) is held.

The hint is rendered into the tree at the position of the KeyHandler component, positioned at the centre of the nearest positioning parent (i.e. parent with position: relative/absolute/etc).

To disable this behaviour on a specific handler, set the disableHint prop to true:

<Key disableHint shortcut="cmd+k" />

To disable this behaviour globally, set the disableHints prop on the provider to true:

<ShortcutProvider disableHints>
	<App />
</ShortcutProvider>

Licence

This code is licensed under the MIT license.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.