Custom event in jQuery that isn't bound to a DOM element?

Question

I\'m curious if its possible to create a custom event in jQuery that isn\'t bound to a DOM element.

I greatly prefer jQuery to YUI but there is one thing in YUI that

Answer 1

According to a comment by John Resig, binding events to custom objects via jQuery is supported:

No particular reason why it's not documented (other than that it's rather non-traditional for most users) - but yes, we support it and have unit tests for it.

So this works:

var a = {foo: 'bar'};
$(a).on('baz', function() {console.log('hello')});
$(a).triggerHandler('baz');
>>> 'hello'

Most users will need triggerHandler(), not trigger(). If .trigger("eventName") is used, it will look for a "eventName" property on the object and attempt to execute it after any attached jQuery handlers are executed (Source).

EDIT (28.02.2017):

After using this pattern for about 2 years in a large codebase, I can attest that this is a bad idea. These custom events lead to incomprehensible data flows. Prefer callbacks instead.