onKeyEvent "down" event fires multiple times when key is held down

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi there,

I am checking for a key press (in this case, the letter “a”) - everything goes well except the event is firing repeatedly in the simulator. 

I am checking for event.phase == “down” before running my function, so I’m not sure why the “down” event is being fired when I hold the button down.

Is this a Mac OSX thing? A simulator thing? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Nick

if (event.keyName == "a") then print(event.phase) if (event.phase == "down") then -- this stuff fires repeatedly end end
#2

Assuming you’re calling this as a Runtime listener, this seems like normal behavior. Your listener is checking every frame for whether the “a” key is in the “down” phase or not. 

UPDATE:

It occurs to me, that this might not be your preferred behavior. You can throw in a flag that gets set depending on key state, so you only see the key called once. Something like:

keyState = 1 if (event.keyName == "a") then print(event.phase) if (event.phase == "down") and keyState == 1 then keyState = 2 -- this stuff should only fire once. end if (event.phase == "up") and keyState == 2 then keyState = 1 -- this stuff should only fire once. end end

YMMV HTH

#3

Thanks for the help, Alex, I appreciate. Your solution is nice, I implemented something similar using a flag as a temporary workaround - 

But is this really the expected behavior? The documentation states that “Key events occur when a keyboard key or gamepad/joystick button has been pressed down or released.” I would expect that the event would fire once when the key is pressed and once when it is released, not continuously. What do you think?

#4

I’m looking at my other projects with keymapping and they aren’t working the way they did 6 months ago. So I have no clue what is going on.

That said, I remember a forum thread talking about the importance of “return true” in hardware button handling. I’ll try to dig it up.

#5

Thanks for the help Alex, I appreciate it - let me know if you find anything!

Does anyone from Corona have any insight on whether or not the behavior I’m experiencing is expected?

#6

Assuming you’re calling this as a Runtime listener, this seems like normal behavior. Your listener is checking every frame for whether the “a” key is in the “down” phase or not. 

UPDATE:

It occurs to me, that this might not be your preferred behavior. You can throw in a flag that gets set depending on key state, so you only see the key called once. Something like:

keyState = 1 if (event.keyName == "a") then print(event.phase) if (event.phase == "down") and keyState == 1 then keyState = 2 -- this stuff should only fire once. end if (event.phase == "up") and keyState == 2 then keyState = 1 -- this stuff should only fire once. end end

YMMV HTH

#7

Thanks for the help, Alex, I appreciate. Your solution is nice, I implemented something similar using a flag as a temporary workaround - 

But is this really the expected behavior? The documentation states that “Key events occur when a keyboard key or gamepad/joystick button has been pressed down or released.” I would expect that the event would fire once when the key is pressed and once when it is released, not continuously. What do you think?

#8

I’m looking at my other projects with keymapping and they aren’t working the way they did 6 months ago. So I have no clue what is going on.

That said, I remember a forum thread talking about the importance of “return true” in hardware button handling. I’ll try to dig it up.

#9

Thanks for the help Alex, I appreciate it - let me know if you find anything!

Does anyone from Corona have any insight on whether or not the behavior I’m experiencing is expected?