Why doesn't onKeyDown and onKeyUp fire when attached to a span within a contenteditable div?

user_14498314 0
Viewed 56

here is a code snippet demonstrating the problem:

import React from 'react'
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'

class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
     <div contentEditable="true">
       <p>
         <span onKeyDown={(e)=>{
           alert("hello world!!")
          }}>Hello world</span>
       </p>
     </div>
    )
  }
}

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

After focusing on the div and pressing some buttons, the alert is not triggered. Why?

https://codesandbox.io/embed/react-playground-forked-fymxg3?fontsize=14&hidenavigation=1&theme=dark

reactjs onkeydown keyboard-events contenteditable javascript
2 Answers

The content of contenteditable element is treated as user input, not being part of the DOM. Same as text in the <input> element.

Thus, you cannot interact with value of that element as you do with normal DOM - meaning no event handlers for you here.

user_13448350

I've faced the same issue.

However, we can add listener of clicks by all the children of the contenteditable parent.

Since someone who want to edit text of a child first click it, we can temporary "store" the child and then we know which child text is edited.

user_32082250
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