trigger-event.md

title	shortTitle	type	language	tags	cover	excerpt	dateModified
Programmatically trigger event on HTML element using JavaScript	Trigger event on HTML element	story	javascript	browser event	cloudy-mountaintop-2	Learn how to trigger an event on an HTML element using JavaScript.	2023-11-03

JavaScript's EventTarget.dispatchEvent() method allows you to trigger an event programmatically. This method accepts an Event object as its only argument, which can be created using either the regular Event constructor or the CustomEvent constructor.

Usually, you'd want to use the CustomEvent constructor, as it allows you to pass custom data to the event listener. The constructor accepts two arguments: eventType and detail. The eventType argument is a string that specifies the type of event to be created (e.g. 'click'). The detail argument is an object that contains the custom data you want to pass to the event listener.

Putting it all together, you can create a function that programmatically triggers an event on an HTML element:

const triggerEvent = (el, eventType, detail) =>
  el.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent(eventType, { detail }));

const myElement = document.getElementById('my-element');
myElement.addEventListener('click', e => console.log(e.detail));

triggerEvent(myElement, 'click');
// The event listener will log: null

triggerEvent(myElement, 'click', { username: 'bob' });
// The event listener will log: { username: 'bob' }