How do I programmatically click on an element in JavaScript?

Question

In IE, I can just call element.click() from JavaScript - how do I accomplish the same task in Firefox? Ideally I'd like to have some JavaScript that would work equally well cross-browser, but if necessary I'll have different per-browser JavaScript for this.

Answer 1

The document.createEvent documentation says that "The createEvent method is deprecated. Use event constructors instead."

So you should use this method instead:

var clickEvent = new MouseEvent("click", {
    "view": window,
    "bubbles": true,
    "cancelable": false
});

and fire it on an element like this:

element.dispatchEvent(clickEvent);

as shown here.

Answer 2

For firefox links appear to be "special". The only way I was able to get this working was to use the createEvent described here on MDN and call the initMouseEvent function. Even that didn't work completely, I had to manually tell the browser to open a link...

var theEvent = document.createEvent("MouseEvent");
theEvent.initMouseEvent("click", true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, false, false, false, false, 0, null);
var element = document.getElementById('link');
element.dispatchEvent(theEvent);

while (element)
{
    if (element.tagName == "A" && element.href != "")
    {
        if (element.target == "_blank") { window.open(element.href, element.target); }
        else { document.location = element.href; }
        element = null;
    }
    else
    {
        element = element.parentElement;
    }
}

Answer 3

Using jQuery you can do exactly the same thing, for example:

$("a").click();

Which will "click" all anchors on the page.

Answer 4

element.click() is a standard method outlined by the W3C DOM specification. Mozilla's Gecko/Firefox follows the standard and only allows this method to be called on INPUT elements.

Answer 5

Are you trying to actually follow the link or trigger the onclick? You can trigger an onclick with something like this:

var link = document.getElementById(linkId);
link.onclick.call(link);

Answer 6

Here's a cross browser working function (usable for other than click handlers too):

function eventFire(el, etype){
    if (el.fireEvent) {
      el.fireEvent('on' + etype);
    } else {
      var evObj = document.createEvent('Events');
      evObj.initEvent(etype, true, false);
      el.dispatchEvent(evObj);
    }
}

Answer 7

I used KooiInc's function listed above but I had to use two different input types one 'button' for IE and one 'submit' for FireFox. I am not exactly sure why but it works.

// HTML

<input type="button" id="btnEmailHidden" style="display:none" />
<input type="submit" id="btnEmailHidden2" style="display:none" />

// in JavaScript

var hiddenBtn = document.getElementById("btnEmailHidden");

if (hiddenBtn.fireEvent) {
    hiddenBtn.fireEvent('onclick');
    hiddenBtn[eType]();
}
else {
    // dispatch for firefox + others
    var evObj = document.createEvent('MouseEvent');
    evObj.initEvent(eType, true, true);
    var hiddenBtn2 = document.getElementById("btnEmailHidden2");
    hiddenBtn2.dispatchEvent(evObj);
}

I have search and tried many suggestions but this is what ended up working. If I had some more time I would have liked to investigate why submit works with FF and button with IE but that would be a luxury right now so on to the next problem.