jQuery keyup get all the characters pressed at a time

Question

How can I get all the character pressed at a time? I have a timer of 500 ms and I want to get all the characters pressed within. Lets say I have pressed "asd" very fast, then I want to use "asd" as a search string, not just "d". Here is my idea:

    var mytimer;
    $filter_container.on('keyup',function(key){
        // getting key from ascii
        var mykey = get_key_from_ascii(key);

        clearTimeout(mytimer);
        var $item = $(this);
        var $item2 = this;
        var ms = 500; // milliseconds
        mytimer = setTimeout(function() {
            // here i want to send the whole character set to search
            my_auto_complete($item, key, $item2);
        }, ms);
    });

Answer 1

try this:

var mytimer;
var collectedKeys = [];

$filter_container.on('keyup',function(key){
    // getting key from ascii
    var mykey = get_key_from_ascii(key);

    // push key to array of keys
    collectedKeys.push(mykey);

    my_auto_complete($item, collectedKeys, $item2);

});

// after 500 ms, clear keys array
mytimer = setTimeout(function() {
        collectedKeys = [];
    }, 500);