How to supress the Alt-Key in Silverlight’s TextBox

You can restrict the input-values in Silverlight’s TextBox by handling the KeyDown-Event. But the KeyDown-Event isn’t fired if the user enters a key by pressing e.g. ALT + 123.

Corresponding to the problem mentioned in http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/147718.aspx, I’ll show here a short workaround by using the TextChanged and KeyUp-Event of the TextBox. Just use the following snippet, that removes a character that was added by pressing the ALT- and another Key or Key-Combination:

private void TextBox_TextChanged(object sender, TextCh… e)
{
  if (_altWasPressed)
  {
    // remove the added character
    var textBox = ((TextBox)sender);
    var caretPos = textBox.SelectionStart;
    var text = textBox.Text;
    var textStart = text.Substring(0, caretPos - 1);
    var textEnd = "";
    if (caretPos < text.Length)
      textEnd = text.Substring(caretPos, text.Length-caretPos);
    textBox.Text = textStart + textEnd;
    textBox.SelectionStart = caretPos - 1;

    _altWasPressed = false;
  }
}
private bool _altWasPressed;
private void TextBox_KeyUp(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
  _altWasPressed = e.Key == Key.Alt;
}

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