event.keyName

Overview

The unique string name of the key. Used to identify which key was pressed down or released.

Gotchas

• The value will be "unknown" if Corona could not identify the key. This can happen when the user presses a custom OEM key on a keyboard. In this case, you can only identify the key by its numeric event.nativeKeyCode value.

• The key name does not represent the character or string that is produced when pressing a key. A key name is just a unique string ID assigned to the key that was pressed or released according to the key position on an ANSI-standard US keyboard. For example, if you press the "A" key on a US keyboard, event.keyName will always be "a", regardless of whether the "Shift" key was held down (that is, you will never receive a capital "A" value). In contrast, if you press the "A" key on a French keyboard, you will get "q" because event.keyName returns the "key code" instead of the local representation of that key.

Example

-- Called when a key event has been received
local function onKeyEvent( event )
    -- Print which key was pressed down/up
    local message = "Key '" .. event.keyName .. "' was pressed " .. event.phase
    print( message )

    -- If the "back" key was pressed on Android or Windows Phone, prevent it from backing out of the app
    if ( event.keyName == "back" ) then
        local platformName = system.getInfo( "platformName" )
        if ( platformName == "Android" ) or ( platformName == "WinPhone" ) then
            return true
        end
    end

    -- IMPORTANT! Return false to indicate that this app is NOT overriding the received key
    -- This lets the operating system execute its default handling of the key
    return false
end

-- Add the key event listener
Runtime:addEventListener( "key", onKeyEvent )

Key Names