Prevent default behavior of events

Question

How can I prevent the default behavior of events?
I know this concept from JavaScript or ActionScript where you could prevent the default behavior of an event by calling e.preventDefault().
How can I achieve this in JavaFX?
E.g. I have a KeyEvent on a TextArea and want to catch the Enter key and prevent it from positioning the cursor in the new line.
I tried consume(), but it seems, it is the equivalent to e.stopPropagation().

Answer 1

TextArea has a bug about mouse event handling: http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-17902, whereby the scrollpane enclosing the editable text eats events and so the events are not exposed to API users, not sure if this will also effect the key processing to the TextArea you are trying to perform. If the issue in 17902 is also causing the TextArea to not respond correctly to user defined key event processing, you can add an extra comment to that Jira to note it.
Information on event handling can be found here: Re: Understanding Mouse Event Bubbling
If TextArea event handling was working correctly, you should probably be able to do what you want by adding an EventFilter on the TextArea and consuming the event you want to capture. Doing this in an EventFilter so you can intercept the event in the capturing phase is preferable to trying to do it in an EventHandler during the bubbling phase. If try to consume the event in an EventHandler, it may not work because the event may already have been handled by the target node or the target node's children.