318

I have a link:

<ul id="titleee" class="gallery">
  <li>
    <a href="#inline" rel="prettyPhoto">Talent</a>
  </li>
</ul>

and I am trying to trigger it by using:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('#titleee').find('a').trigger('click');
});

But it doesn't work.

I've also tried: $('#titleee a').trigger('click');

Edit:

I actually need to trigger whatever get's called here <a href="#inline" rel="prettyPhoto">

6
  • 8
    location.href($('#titleee').find('a').attr("href")); ?
    – Sylvain
    Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 22:02
  • 4
    or even $('ul.gallery').find('li>a').trigger('click');
    – Phil Helix
    Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 22:03
  • 147
    Guys. The real answer is so simple. $('#titleee a')[0].click();. In other words, use the DOM click method, not the jQuery one. Upvote Graham Hotchkiss! Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 18:23
  • 6
    @romkyns no its not right as its opening a pop up instead of new tab. but clicking on a dummy span inside this 'a' tag serves the purpose Commented Jul 19, 2015 at 1:45
  • 2
    If you are trying to trigger an event on the anchor, then the code you have will work.$('ul#titleee li a[href="#inline"]').click();
    – Anand Pal
    Commented Aug 23, 2018 at 10:32

12 Answers 12

383

If you are trying to trigger an event on the anchor, then the code you have will work I recreated your example in jsfiddle with an added eventHandler so you can see that it works:

$(document).on("click", "a", function(){
    $(this).text("It works!");
});

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("a").trigger("click");
});

Are you trying to cause the user to navigate to a certain point on the webpage by clicking the anchor, or are you trying to trigger events bound to it? Maybe you haven't actually bound the click event successfully to the event?

Also this:

$('#titleee').find('a').trigger('click');

is the equivalent of this:

$('#titleee a').trigger('click');

No need to call find. :)

10
  • 21
    @Kit .find() is a faster selector than what you are proposing, do a benchmark if you disagree but your proposal slows it down. positively :-)
    – Ady Ngom
    Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 22:22
  • 16
    @mashappslabs - That's okay. I'm happy for you if you feel the need to do premature and micro optimizations, no matter how true it is. :)
    – Kit Sunde
    Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 22:34
  • 7
    @Kit... so when you are making a statement such as "no need to call find", it does not fall into the realm of premature optimization?? I think it does but it just happens to be slower than what was proposed at first. I'm not responding for the sake of argument, but for a concerted effort to get better at what we all love doing. I hope this comes out right :-)
    – Ady Ngom
    Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 22:45
  • 5
    @mashappslabs - Having seen jsperf.com for the first time I thought I'd come back and say you are right, your method is faster in the general case. Only Opera is slower. jsperf.com/jquery-selector-perf-right-to-left/32
    – Kit Sunde
    Commented Apr 28, 2011 at 4:50
  • 11
    Oddly, the above does not work for me, but @GrahamHotchkiss answer does.
    – Oliver
    Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 1:23
274

Sorry, but the event handler is really not needed. What you do need is another element within the tag to click on.

<a id="test1" href="javascript:alert('test1')">TEST1</a>
<a id="test2" href="javascript:alert('test2')"><span>TEST2</span></a>

Jquery:

$('#test1').trigger('click'); // Nothing
$('#test2').find('span').trigger('click'); // Works
$('#test2 span').trigger('click'); // Also Works

This is all about what you are clicking and it is not the tag but the thing within it. Unfortunately, bare text does not seem to be recognised by JQuery, but it is by vanilla javascript:

document.getElementById('test1').click(); // Works!

Or by accessing the jQuery object as an array

$('#test1')[0].click(); // Works too!!!
7
  • 13
    $('selector')[0].click() will actually handle at least one case that triggering the event handler will not: having the browser recognize it as an actual click for triggering a protocol handler link. Calling trigger on the click event will not cause the associated application to launch. Thanks for including it in your answer! Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 16:04
  • 4
    Yep, .click() is precisely what I needed!
    – notacouch
    Commented Oct 17, 2014 at 17:10
  • 3
    $('#test2 span').trigger('click'); helped as it can open a url in new tab but $('#test1')[0].click(); was opening a pop up instea. Commented Jul 19, 2015 at 1:43
  • When I try to handle click on background element: $('#titleee a').trigger('click'); -> Doesn't work! $('#titleee a')[0].click(); -> Works!
    – 18augst
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 9:58
  • 3
    $('#test1')[0].click(); is a saviour. Thanks a lot
    – Amit Bisht
    Commented Sep 21, 2017 at 21:21
72

Since this question is ranked #1 in Google for "triggering a click on an <a> element" and no answer actually mentions how you do that, this is how you do it:

$('#titleee a')[0].click();

Explanation: you trigger a click on the underlying html-element, not the jQuery-object.

You're welcome googlers :)

2
  • 5
    "you trigger a click on the underlying html-element, not the jQuery-object." -- this clicked for me, thank you!
    – Frish
    Commented Jun 20, 2019 at 1:28
  • [0] does the trick, great job!
    – aussiedan
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 4:45
10

If you are trying to trigger an event on the anchor, then the code you have will work.

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('a#titleee').trigger('click');
});

OR

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('#titleee li a[href="#inline"]').click();
});

OR

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('ul#titleee li a[href="#inline"]').click();
});
7

With the code you provided, you cannot expect anything to happen. I second @mashappslabs : first add an event handler :

$("selector").click(function() {
    console.log("element was clicked"); // or alert("click");
});

then trigger your event :

$("selector").click(); //or
$("selector").trigger("click");

and you should see the message in your console.

1
  • 8
    This does not work for me: if selector is "a" (HTML tag for links, just to be clear), the anonymous function gets called when I call trigger, but the tag's action does not happen. It's like the event does not propagate to the associated DOM element. The answer by @GrahamHotchkiss is the only one that works reliably for me.
    – Oliver
    Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 1:23
6

Well you have to setup the click event first then you can trigger it and see what happens:

//good habits first let's cache our selector
var $myLink = $('#titleee').find('a');
$myLink.click(function (evt) {
  evt.preventDefault();
  alert($(this).attr('href'));
});

// now the manual trigger
$myLink.trigger('click');
4

This is the demo how to trigger event

<!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.12.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>
    $(document).ready(function(){
        $("input").select(function(){
            $("input").after(" Text marked!");
        });
        $("button").click(function(){
            $("input").trigger("select");
        });
    });
    </script>
    </head>
    <body>

    <input type="text" value="Hello World"><br><br>

    <button>Trigger the select event for the input field</button>

    </body>
    </html>
3

We can do it in many ways...

CASE - 1

We can use trigger like this : $("#myID").trigger("click");

CASE - 2

We can use click() function like this : $("#myID").click();

CASE - 3

If we want to write function on programmatically click then..

$("#myID").click(function() {
  console.log("Clicked");
// Do here whatever you want
});

CASE - 4

// Triggering a native browser event using the simulate plugin
$("#myID").simulate( "click" );  

Also you can refer this : https://learn.jquery.com/events/triggering-event-handlers/

2

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but will get you the same result with less headache.

I always have my click events call methods that contain all the logic I would like to execute. So that I can just call the method directly if I want to perform the action without an actual click.

0
1

For links this should work:

eval($(selector).attr('href'));
0
1

You should call the element's native .click() method or use the createEvent API.

For more info, please visit: https://learn.jquery.com/events/triggering-event-handlers/

1
  • 6
    Welcome to Stack Overflow! While this might be a valuable hint to solve the problem, a good answer also demonstrates the solution. Please edit to provide example code to show what you mean. Alternatively, consider writing this as a comment instead. Commented May 30, 2017 at 11:13
0

Shortest answer:

$('#titlee a').click();

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