Programmatically pressing Alt 0 with JavaScript

Question

What I'm trying to do is run a script (JS) that selects a test box. It's ID field name is JMan. Once it selects that field I am trying to programmatically have my code perform the key combination ALT+0 and then delay itself for 5 seconds. By the way I'm performing this in the IE browser.

function myFunction() {
    var keyboardEvent = document.createEvent("keyboardEvent").;
    document.getElementById("JMan");
}
var keyboardEvent = document.createEvent("KeyboardEvent");
var initMethod = typeof keyboardEvent.initKeyboardEvent !== 'undefined' ? "initKeyboardEvent" : "initKeyEvent";


keyboardEvent[initMethod](
    "keydown", // event type : keydown, keyup, keypress
    true, // bubbles
    true, // cancelable
    window, // viewArg: should be window
    false, // ctrlKeyArg
    true, // altKeyArgenter code here
    false, // shiftKeyArg
    false, // metaKeyArg
    48, // keyCodeArg : unsigned long the virtual key code, else 0
    0 // charCodeArgs : unsigned long the Unicode character associated with the depressed key, else 0
);
document.dispatchEvent(keyboardEvent);

Answer 1

The detection event handler is a no-frills method of detecting Alt-0. You might consider more sophisticated checking to do things like determine if another key was pressed between the Alt and 0 (i.e this code will treat Alt-1-0 as if it were Alt-0 or Ctrl-Alt-0 as if it were Alt-0)(At least it checks if you hold down Alt-0). This is mainly because key events differ considerably between browsers and I wanted to make something that will hopefully work on the majority.

The button in this example fires a minimal "Alt-0" event designed for the event handler to catch (or you should be able to type Alt-0 into the window).

function fireAlt0() {
    console.log("firing event");
    window.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent("keydown", { key: "0", altKey: true }));
}

function detectAlt0(event) {
    if ("keydown" == event.type) { // we might want to use the same function for any of ( keydown, keypress, keyup ) events
        if (event.key == "0" && event.altKey && !event.repeat) {
            console.log("Open a window!");
        }
    }
}
    
window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
    // Use keydown because keypress won't fire for the Alt-0 combination (since it doesn't produce a visible character)
    window.addEventListener("keydown", detectAlt0, false);
    document.getElementById("button").addEventListener("click", fireAlt0, false);
}, false);

<button id="button">fireAlt0</button>