How to simulate a click with JavaScript?

Question

I'm just wondering how I can use JavaScript to simulate a click on an element.

Currently I have:

function simulateClick(control) {
  if (document.all) {
    control.click();
  } else {
    var evObj = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');
    evObj.initMouseEvent('click', true, true, window, 1, 12, 345, 7, 220, false, false, true, false, 0, null );
    control.dispatchEvent(evObj);
  }
}

<a href="http://www.google.com" id="mytest1">test 1</a><br>

<script type="text/javascript">
    simulateClick(document.getElementById('mytest1'));
</script>

But it's not working :(

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Here's what I cooked up. It's pretty simple, but it works:

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);
  }
}

Usage:

eventFire(document.getElementById('mytest1'), 'click');

Answer 2

What about something simple like:

document.getElementById('elementID').click();

Supported even by IE.

Answer 3

Have you considered using jQuery to avoid all the browser detection? With jQuery, it would be as simple as:

$("#mytest1").click();

Answer 4

var elem = document.getElementById('mytest1');

// Simulate clicking on the specified element.
triggerEvent( elem, 'click' );

/**
 * Trigger the specified event on the specified element.
 * @param  {Object} elem  the target element.
 * @param  {String} event the type of the event (e.g. 'click').
 */
function triggerEvent( elem, event ) {
  var clickEvent = new Event( event ); // Create the event.
  elem.dispatchEvent( clickEvent );    // Dispatch the event.
}

Reference

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Creating_and_triggering_events
• https://codepen.io/felquis/pen/damDA

Answer 5

You could save yourself a bunch of space by using jQuery. You only need to use:

$('#myElement').trigger("click")

Answer 6

The top answer is the best! However, it was not triggering mouse events for me in Firefox when etype = 'click'.

So, I changed the document.createEvent to 'MouseEvents' and that fixed the problem. The extra code is to test whether or not another bit of code was interfering with the event, and if it was cancelled I would log that to console.

function eventFire(el, etype){
  if (el.fireEvent) {
    el.fireEvent('on' + etype);
  } else {
    var evObj = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');
    evObj.initEvent(etype, true, false);
    var canceled = !el.dispatchEvent(evObj);
    if (canceled) {
      // A handler called preventDefault.
      console.log("automatic click canceled");
    } else {
      // None of the handlers called preventDefault.
    } 
  }
}

Answer 7

document.getElementById('elementId').dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent("click",{bubbles: true, cancellable: true}));

Follow this link to know about the mouse events using Javascript and browser compatibility for the same

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MouseEvent#Browser_compatibility

Answer 8

Simulating an event is similar to creating a custom event. To simulate a mouse event

• we gonna have to create MouseEvent using document.createEvent().
• Then using initMouseEvent(), we've to set up the mouse event that is going to occur.
• Then dispatched the mouse event on the element on which you'd like to simulate an event.

In the following code, I've used setTimeout so that the button gets clicked automatically after 1 second.

const div = document.querySelector('div');

div.addEventListener('click', function(e) {
  console.log('Simulated click');
});

const simulatedDivClick = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');

simulatedDivClick.initEvent(
  'click', /* Event type */
  true, /* bubbles */
  true, /* cancelable */
  document.defaultView, /* view */
  0, /* detail */
  0, /* screenx */
  0, /* screeny */
  0, /* clientx */
  0, /* clienty */
  false, /* ctrlKey */
  false, /* altKey */
  false, /* shiftKey */
  0, /* metaKey */
  null, /* button */
  null /* relatedTarget */
);

// Automatically click after 1 second
setTimeout(function() {
  div.dispatchEvent(simulatedDivClick);
}, 1000);

<div> Automatically click </div>

Answer 9

This isn't very well documented, but we can trigger any kinds of events very simply.

This example will trigger 50 double click on the button:

let theclick = new Event("dblclick")

for (let i = 0;i < 50;i++){
  action.dispatchEvent(theclick) 
}

<button id="action" ondblclick="out.innerHTML+='Wtf '">TEST</button>
<div id="out"></div>

The Event interface represents an event which takes place in the DOM.

An event can be triggered by the user action e.g. clicking the mouse button or tapping keyboard, or generated by APIs to represent the progress of an asynchronous task. It can also be triggered programmatically, such as by calling the HTMLElement.click() method of an element, or by defining the event, then sending it to a specified target using EventTarget.dispatchEvent().

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Event

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Event/Event

Answer 10

const Discord = require("discord.js");
const superagent = require("superagent");

module.exports = {
    name: "hug",
    category: "action",
    description: "hug a user!",
    usage: "hug <user>",
    run: async (client, message, args) => {
    let hugUser = message.mentions.users.first() 
    if(!hugUser) return message.channel.send("You forgot to mention somebody.");
    let hugEmbed2 = new Discord.MessageEmbed()
    .setColor("#36393F")
    .setDescription(`**${message.author.username}** hugged **himself**`)
    .setImage("https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/859/605/3e7.gif")
     .setFooter(`© Yuki V5.3.1`, "https://cdn.discordapp.com/avatars/489219428358160385/19ad8d8c2fefd03fa0e1a2e49a2915c4.png")
  if (hugUser.id === message.author.id) return message.channel.send(hugEmbed2);
    const {body} = await superagent
    .get(`https://nekos.life/api/v2/img/hug`);

    let hugEmbed = new Discord.MessageEmbed()
    .setDescription(`**${message.author.username}** hugged **${message.mentions.users.first().username}**`)
    .setImage(body.url)
    .setColor("#36393F")
     .setFooter(`© Yuki V5.3.1`, "https://cdn.discordapp.com/avatars/489219428358160385/19ad8d8c2fefd03fa0e1a2e49a2915c4.png")
    message.channel.send(hugEmbed)
}
}

Answer 11

document.getElementById("element").click()

Simply select the element from the DOM. The node has a click function, which you can call.

Or

document.querySelector("#element").click()