Hitting enter while FOCUS on an EDIT

Okay, I have a single line edit. And when the user types something, for example "bunny rabbit" and then they hit ENTER to enter it, how would I be able to capture this ENTER from the edit box to handle it?

I have tried WM_CHAR, but I guess that is only for focus on the main window.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

The simplest way is to give your edit contol the ES_MULTILINE | ES_WANTRETURN styles. If that's no good for you then subclass the edit and handle, for example, WM_KEYDOWN for the control.

But if I have this ES_WANTRETURN, how would that work? How will I know when ENTER is hit?

Had to test it to find the exact message but here you go:

On a single line edit box with ES_MULTILINE and ES_WANTRETURN when the user hits ENTER a WM_COMMAND message will be generated, the LOWORD of wParam will be the HMENU and the HIWORD will be EN_MAXTEXT.

So just process the EN_MAXTEXT message. Becareful because the message could be generated by the user filling the messagebox also

Strangely, a very similar question was given on Nerdbrains a few days ago. It used subclassing to solve the problem and the thread contains an example. The original thread can be viewed here.

If in doubt RTM

"ES_WANTRETURN Specifies that a carriage return be inserted when the user presses the ENTER key while entering text into a multiple-line edit control in a dialog box. Without this style, pressing the ENTER key has the same effect as pressing the dialog box’s default pushbutton. This style has no effect on a single-line edit control. "
MSDN

I posted a subclassing solution for single line edit boxes in this thread.

Originally posted by novacain
If in doubt RTM

"ES_WANTRETURN Specifies that a carriage return be inserted when the user presses the ENTER key while entering text into a multiple-line edit control in a dialog box. Without this style, pressing the ENTER key has the same effect as pressing the dialog box’s default pushbutton. This style has no effect on a single-line edit control. "
MSDN

Good lord, what was I thinking? Or rather, why wasn't I thinking? Thanks for the timely intervention, Novacain, and apologies to Garfield for that (ie ES_WANTRETURN) piece of nonsense.

edit: Although, in all fairness, I did mention subclassing.

Actually as I posted, if you use ES_WANTRETURN and ES_MULTILINE with an edit box that only has space for one line (maybe thats the point some aren't getting) hutting return will give an ES_MAXTEXT message that you can then process. I'm sure adrianxw's way is most likely better, but for those of us that haven't dealt with subclassing there is another way.