Best way to track onchange as-you-type in input type="text"?

Question

In my experience, input type="text" onchange event usually occurs only after you leave (blur) the control.

Is there a way to force browser to trigger onchange every time textfield content changes? If not, what is the most elegant way to track this “manually”?

Using onkey* events is not reliable, since you can right-click the field and choose Paste, and this will change the field without any keyboard input.

Is setTimeout the only way?.. Ugly :-)

Answer 1

These days listen for oninput. It feels like onchange without the need to lose focus on the element. It is HTML5.

It’s supported by everyone (even mobile), except IE8 and below. For IE add onpropertychange. I use it like this:

const source = document.getElementById('source');  const result = document.getElementById('result');    const inputHandler = function(e) {    result.innerHTML = e.target.value;  }    source.addEventListener('input', inputHandler);  source.addEventListener('propertychange', inputHandler); // for IE8  // Firefox/Edge18-/IE9+ don’t fire on <select><option>  // source.addEventListener('change', inputHandler); 

<input id="source">  <div id="result"></div>

Answer 2

Update:

See Another answer (2015).

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Original 2009 Answer:

So, you want the onchange event to fire on keydown, blur, and paste? That's magic.

If you want to track changes as they type, use "onkeydown". If you need to trap paste operations with the mouse, use "onpaste" (IE, FF3) and "oninput" (FF, Opera, Chrome, Safari¹).

¹_{Broken for <textarea> on Safari. Use textInput instead}