What event to use for ListItem in react to choose the focused element on "enter" key press?

Question

I have a ListItem in my react website. What event should be triggered to call a function when I press enter key on focused item. Code for the ListItem is as below:

<ListItem 
   tabIndex={'0'} 
   className={classes.listItem} 
   key={timeline} 
   value={timeline} 
   onClick={props.handleChangeTimeline} 
   onKeyDown={handleChange}>
      {timeline}
</ListItem>

The onClick event works fine with mouse click. But I am looking for keyboard accessibilty. So when an element in the dropdown is focused and I press the enter key a function to handle that event will be called.

I tried onKeyDown event. It gets triggered but event.target.value is null. If get this value on some event I think the problem will be solved.

Answer 1

The keydown event would be the way to go. Here's a working example. Perhaps the issue is elsewhere in your code.

function App () {
  function listenForEnterKey(event, data) {
    if (event.key !== 'Enter') return;
    console.log(data)
  }
  return (
    <ul>
      <li tabIndex="0" onKeyDown={()=>listenForEnterKey(event, 1)}>Focus and press ENTER.</li>
      <li tabIndex="0" onKeyDown={()=>listenForEnterKey(event, 2)}>Focus and press ENTER.</li>
    </ul>
  )
}
 
ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById("root")).render(<App />)

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/18.2.0/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-dom/18.2.0/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
<div id="root"></div>