Simulating a click in jQuery JavaScript on a link

Question

I want to simulate a click on any link on a page using JavaScript  If that link has some function binded to its  onclick  event  by any other JS I don t have any control over   then that function must be called otherwise the link should behave in the normal manner and open a new page    I am not sure that just checking the value of the  onclick  handler would suffice  I want to build this so that it works on any link element    I have no control over what function maybe binded to the onclick event of the link using whichever JS library  not necessarily jQuery  or by simply using JavaScript   EDIT  With the help of the answers below  it looks like it is possible to check for event handlers attached using jQuery or using the onclick attribute  How do I check for event handlers attached using addEventListener   any other JS library so that it is foolproof

User · Answer

You can use the the click function to trigger the click event on the selected element.

Example:

$( 'selector for your link' ).click ();

You can learn about various selectors in jQuery's documentation.

EDIT: like the commenters below have said; this only works on events attached with jQuery, inline or in the style of "element.onclick". It does not work with addEventListener, and it will not follow the link if no event handlers are defined. You could solve this with something like this:

var linkEl = $( 'link selector' );
if ( linkEl.attr ( 'onclick' ) === undefined ) {
    document.location = linkEl.attr ( 'href' );
} else {
    linkEl.click ();
}

Don't know about addEventListener though.

User · Answer

Try this  function submitRequest buttonId        if  document getElementById buttonId     null                document getElementById buttonId     undefined            return            if  document getElementById buttonId  dispatchEvent            var e   document createEvent  MouseEvents            e initEvent  click   true  true           document getElementById buttonId  dispatchEvent e         else           document getElementById buttonId  click              and you can use it like  submitRequest  target-element-id

User · Answer

Why not just the good ol  javascript        element   0  click

User · Answer

Easy  Just use jQuery s click function       theElement   click

User · Answer

At first see this question to see how you can find if a link has a jQuery handler assigned to it   Next use      a   attr  onclick     to see if there is a javascript event assigned to it   If any of the above is true  then call the click method  If not  get the link      a   attr  href     and follow it   I am afraid I don t know what to do if addEventListener is used to add an event handler  If you are in charge of the full page source  use only jQuery event handlers

User · Answer

Just       your item   trigger  click      using  trigger   you can simulate many type of events  just passing it as the parameter

User · Answer

All this might not help say when you use rails remote form button to simulate click to  I tried to port nice event simulation from prototype here  my snippets  Just did it and it works for me

[javascript] Simulating a click in jQuery/JavaScript on a link

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