aframe-super-keyboard

Lightweight, functional, and fully customizable keyboard for VR

For A-Frame v0.8.2+.

API

Property	Description	Default Value
align	Input box text alignment (left, center, right)	'left'
blinkingSpeed	Speed of the cursor. Duration in ms (less is faster)	400
filters	Text filters to apply (see next section)	[none]
font	Input box font	'aileronsemibold'
hand	Selector of cursor entity (e.g., '#rightHand').	[cursor], [vive-controls], [tracked-controls], [oculus-touch-controls], [windows-motion-controls], [hand-controls], [daydream-controls] [cursor] > [raycaster]. You will need to apply the cursor component to this entity for now. If this entity does not have a raycaster, one will be automatically set for you with the correct raycaster.objects property respective for the keyboard. This entity needs a cursor component. laser-controls can handle for you, if you are specifying your own cursor for a VR controller, make sure to specify cursor.upEvents and cursor.downEvents.
imagePath	Keyboard image folder path	'.' (current directory)
inputColor	Input box font color	#6699ff
interval	Throttling speed for calculating key hover changes (ms)	50
keyBgColor	Key background color (they are composited in additive mode, so #000 is invisible)	#000
keyColor	The keyboard image is multiplied by this color	#6699ff
keyHoverColor	Key background hover color	#1A407F
keyPressColor	Key background pressed color	#5290F6
label	Label text, shown on top of keyboard	[empty string]
labelColor	Label font color	#aaa
maxLength	Maximum number of characters allowed (after filtering)	0 (unlimited)
model	Keyboard type (basic, numpad)	'basic'
multipleInputs	Allows to enter multiple values (keyboard stays open and clears value after entry)	false
show	Visible or not (mainly for defining initial state)	true
value	Input box value (before filtering)	[empty string]
width	Keyboard width (in meters)	0.8

Events

Name	Description
superkeyboardchange	Value changed.
superkeyboarddismiss	Keyboard closed.
superkeyboardinput	Return key hit.

Filters

You can choose as many filters as you want. For example: <a-entity super-keyboard="filters: title, numbers, trim"></a-entity>.

Current filters are:

Name	Description	Example output with input "hello dear WORLD, 123! "
alllower	All chars lowercase	"hello dear world, 123! "
allupper	All chars uppercase	"HELLO DEAR WORLD, 123! "
custom	apply custom filter defined by user (see below)
first	Uppercase only first letter in text	"Hello dear WORLD, 123! "
numbers	Accept only numbers or dot in text	"123"
title	Uppercase first letter of words	"Hello Dear WORLD, 123! "
trim	Remove trailing spaces	"hello dear WORLD, 123!"

Custom filter can be set using the method setCustomFilter(func) of the component. The func parameter is a function that receives a string and must return the filtered string.

It can be defined from a custom component, for example this could be a password **** filter:

<script>
AFRAME.registerComponent('password-filter', {
  init: function () {
    this.el.components['super-keyboard'].setCustomFilter(function(str){
      return '*'.repeat(str.length);
    });
  }
});
</script>

<a-entity super-keyboard="filters: custom" password-filter></a-entity>

(play example)

Defining Custom Keyboards and Layouts

super-keyboard is based on a single image for the whole keyboard and its input box. By customizing this image and some variables, you can create any keyboard you like, with any texture, layout and appearance.

Note: As of version 1.0, the image is expected to has double width than height (for example, 2048 x 1028). This limitation should be removed in next versions.

First, you create the image of the keyboard, with the characters and control keys such as Enter, Dismiss, Backspace, Shift and Space.

Then you have to tell super-keyboard where the keys are, what is their size, and what character (or command) they produce. For doing this you can use this editor providing an image of the keyboard but with flat colored rectangles where the keys are supposed to be (they must not overlap). Then, just by clicking and pressing the corresponding key, you will get the code necessary for defining the layout of the keyboard.

Finally, you call the component method addCustomModel(name, layout_definition) and set the model property to your keyboard's name.

layout_definition is an object with the following properties:

Name	Description	Example value
img	Keyboard image path	"my-keyboard.png"
inputOffsetX	x distance increment of the input box text, to fine tune	0.01
inputOffsetY	Same as previous, but y increment	0.01
layout	Array with key slices data (the code generated in the editor)
wrapCount	WrapCount value of the input box text. It sets the size of its font.	20

See an example code of a custom keyboard (play example)

Installation

Browser

Install and use by directly including the browser files.

Also grab the keyboard assets (e.g., in the dist/) and drop into your project, specifying the imagePath.

<head>
  <script src="https://unpkg.com/aframe-super-keyboard@1.0.0/dist/aframe-super-keyboard.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <a-scene>
    <a-entity id="mouseCursor" cursor="rayOrigin: mouse"></a-entity>

    <a-entity id="hand" laser-controls="hand: right"></a-entity>

    <!-- Change hand to `hand` for VR. -->
    <a-entity id="keyboard" super-keyboard="hand: #mouseCursor; imagePath:../../dist/" position="0 1.076 -0.5" rotation="-30 0 0"></a-entity>
  </a-scene>
</body>

npm

Install via npm:

npm install aframe-super-keyboard

Then require and use.

require('aframe');
require('aframe-super-keyboard');