Javascript/jQuery: programmatically follow a link

Question

In Javascript code, I would like to programmatically cause the browser to follow a link that\'s on my page. Simple case:

Answer 1

METHOD 1 click method

HTMLElements have a method click() https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/element.click

function goToBar() {
   document.getElementById('foo').click();
}

---

Method 2 Firing synthetic events

I wonder why saluce deleted his answer. That solution is what I've used in the past (when click was an IE only thing). That is, firing a synthetic browser event (not a fake one like jQuery's click()). Let me post a solution using that idea...

DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/eyS6x/3/

/**
 * Fire an event handler to the specified node. Event handlers can detect that the event was fired programatically
 * by testing for a 'synthetic=true' property on the event object
 * @param {HTMLNode} node The node to fire the event handler on.
 * @param {String} eventName The name of the event without the "on" (e.g., "focus")
 */
function fireEvent(node, eventName) {
  // Make sure we use the ownerDocument from the provided node to avoid cross-window problems
  var doc;
  if (node.ownerDocument) {
    doc = node.ownerDocument;
  } else if (node.nodeType == 9 /** DOCUMENT_NODE */){
    // the node may be the document itself
    doc = node;
  } else {
    throw new Error("Invalid node passed to fireEvent: " + +node.tagName + "#" + node.id);
  }

  if (node.fireEvent) {
    // IE-style
    var event = doc.createEventObject();
    event.synthetic = true; // allow detection of synthetic events
    node.fireEvent("on" + eventName, event);
  } else if (node.dispatchEvent) {
    // Gecko-style approach is much more difficult.
    var eventClass = "";

    // Different events have different event classes.
    // If this switch statement can't map an eventName to an eventClass,
    // the event firing is going to fail.
    switch (eventName) {
      case "click":
      case "mousedown":
      case "mouseup":
        eventClass = "MouseEvents";
        break;

      case "focus":
      case "change":
      case "blur":
      case "select":
        eventClass = "HTMLEvents";
        break;

      default:
        throw "JSUtil.fireEvent: Couldn't find an event class for event '" + eventName + "'.";
        break;
    }
    var event = doc.createEvent(eventClass);
    var bubbles = eventName == "change" ? false : true;  
    event.initEvent(eventName, bubbles, true); // All events created as bubbling and cancelable.

    event.synthetic = true; // allow detection of synthetic events
    node.dispatchEvent(event);
  }
};

document.getElementById('button').onclick = function() {
   fireEvent( document.getElementById('link'), 'click');
}