re-firing a click event on a link with jQuery

Question

i've got a page (asp.net) where I trap the click event of a link. i then do some dirty checking and present a dialog to the user,

$(function() {
    var clickedLink;

    $('.checkdirty').click(function(event) { 
         if(isDirty == false){
              return true;
          }
          clickedLink = $(this);
          $('#dirtysave-dialog').dialog('open');
          return false;
    }); 

});

do you want to loose your changes Yes/No etc.

$('#dirtysave-dialog').dialog({ bgiframe: true, autoOpen: false, 
                                    height: 125, width: 425, modal: true,
                     title: "You have unsaved changes, do you want to continue and loose changes?!!",
                     buttons: {
                     "Yes": function() {
                         isDirty = false;
                         $(this).dialog("close"); 
                         $(clickedLink).click();
                     },
                     "No": function() { 
                         $(this).dialog("close"); 
                     }
                },
                open: function(type, data) {
                    $(this).parent().appendTo("form");
                }
        }); 

if they click yes i then clear the isDirty flag and call click on the link. this goes back in to the click event handler, does the check

if(isDirty == false){
     return true;
}

returns true but the event never happens....

i need to click the link again manually for it to fire.

any ideas??

Answer 1

.click() only fires the event handlers for onclick, it doesn't actually make the default action of following the link happen. Probably the quickest method is just to do that manually:

window.location= clickedLink.href;

PS. “lose”

Answer 2

you can use the trigger function, Change:

$(clickedLink).click();

to

$(clickedLink).trigger("click");

A better way would be to separate your click functionality out into a separate function and call this, however the above will work.