disabling keys: limit user to alphabet and numbers

[game2d]

when user press can key than the code below gets the key user just pressed. the problem is that i want to only limit user to press alphabet and numbers. so i want to disable weird char ex left, right, up, @,$,!,%..... as you can see this will take up alot of if statments. is there better way to do this?

if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT || keys == KeyEvent.VK_CAPS_LOCK || keys ==KeyEvent.VK_LEFT ||
   keys ==KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT || keys ==KeyEvent.VK_DOWN || keys ==KeyEvent.VK_UP   .....)  //more button to disable
{
}
else{  //store the char in array            
    username[z] = e.getKeyChar();
    z++;
}
 

[Rabbit]

Rather than blacklisting the keys, whitelist the ranges that are allowed.

[game2d]

whats whitlist the range? is there tutorial online how to do this?

[Nepomuk]

I don't know of a tutorial, but what Rabbit means is the following:
As you can see in the KeyEvent API docs, all of these events are basically integers and can be compared as such. So you can check which keys should be allowed (hence a whitelist) by something like this:

if( (keys >= KeyEvent.VK_0 && keys <= KeyEvent.VK_9)
 || (keys >= KeyEvent.VK_A && keys <= KeyEvent.VK_Z)) {
  // do stuff
} else {
  // Tell the user he pressed a deactivated key. Or don't. Your choice.
}

[game2d]

ah i see. i didnt knew we could do this. thanks alot guys