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I have an app with a login page that has three fields for three different random characters. When the user leaves the last field, the soft keyboard disappears and the user can touch a "login" button on screen.

When there is a hardware keyboard (bluetooth or physical) attached, I'd like to be able to hit "enter" on it. However because the user is not in a field, I can't see how to detect this key being pressed.

Would anyone have advice on which class handles key press events? Presumably there is a delegate that I can use to receive these but my searches through the SDK haven't found anything.

Thanks

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3 Answers 3

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15

For iOS 7.0 or later, you can return UIKeyCommands for the keyCommands property from any UIResponder, such as UIViewController:

Objective-C

// In a view or view controller subclass: - (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder { return YES; } - (NSArray *)keyCommands { return @[ [UIKeyCommand keyCommandWithInput:@"\r" modifierFlags:0 action:@selector(enterPressed)] ]; } - (void)enterPressed { NSLog(@"Enter pressed"); }

Swift

// In a UIView/UIViewController subclass: override var canBecomeFirstResponder: Bool { true } override var keyCommands: [UIKeyCommand]? { return [ UIKeyCommand(input: "\r", modifierFlags: [], action: #selector(enterPressed)) ] } @objc func enterPressed() { print("Enter pressed") }
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3 Comments

This will override any other text input fields.
Do you know if it's possible to get the event type? keyUp keyDown?
see here: stackoverflow.com/a/61312598/7487013
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One way to accomplish this is to have a hidden extra (4th in your case) text field. Make it 1x1 px in size and transparent. Then make it the first responder when any of your other 3 text fields are not, and look for text change events in that hidden field to trigger your key input event.

You might also want to check the notification for a software keyboard appearing if you don't want it to stay visible as well.

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Hey, do you have a code example of how that would work? Especially how I hide the keyboard for the hidden textfield.
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As a followup to the response by @Patrick, here is how you do it in Xamarin.iOS:

public override bool CanBecomeFirstResponder { get { return true; } } public override UIKeyCommand[] KeyCommands { get { return new[]{ UIKeyCommand.Create((NSString)"\r", (UIKeyModifierFlags)0, new ObjCRuntime.Selector("enterPressed")) }; } } [Export("enterPressed")] private void OnEnterPressed() { // Handle Enter Key }
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Keep in mind this will override any other text inputs on the app.

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