You need a document listener, not an action listener. The action listener works when you press enter or make the text field lose focus.

Here's what we use in one of our apps any time the text changes at all (not just keystrokes, but drag/drop of text and copy/paste):

 # In the controller
add_listener :type => :document, :components => {"license_key_text.document" => "license_key_text"}

def license_key_text_insert_update
    ...
end

Be aware that if you do an update_view in one of these events that you can cause an infinite loop (the update_view changes your text field, which fires the event again, which calls update_view again... etc). You can work around this with :ignoring in the view. See View.map for details:

http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/api/classes/Monkeybars/View.html#M000091

Another option if you are in a raw_mapping is to use disable_handlers:

http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/api/classes/HandlerContainer.html#M000157

If you find this helpful can you add some recipes to the wiki? Thanks in advance!

I misunderstood what you were trying to do. Given you still have the original mapping, this is what you would do:

def button_action_performed
  update_model(view_model, :field)
  puts model.field
end

You have to make yourself a member of the project, which is done on the left blue panel, near the bottom if I remember correctly. Then you can edit the wiki all you like!