JavaScript dispatchEvent

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to programmatically create and dispatch events using Event constructor and dispatchEvent() method.

Typically, events are generated by user actions such as mouse clicks and key presses. In addition, events can be generated from code.

To generate an event programmatically, you follow these steps:

• First, create a new Event object using Event constructor.
• Then, trigger the event using element.dispatchEvent() method.

Event constructor #

To create a new event, you use the Event constructor like this:

let event = new Event(type, [,options]);Copy

The Event constructor accepts two parameters:

type #

is a string that specifies the event type such as 'click'.

options #

is an object with two optional properties:

• bubbles: is a boolean value that determines if the event bubbles or not. If it is true then the event is bubbled and vice versa.
• cancelable: is also a boolean value that specifies whether the event is cancelable when it is true.

By default, the options object is:

{ bubbles: false, cancelable: false}Copy

For example, the following creates a new click event with the default options object:

let clickEvent = new Event('click');Copy

dispatchEvent method #

After creating an event, you can fire it on a target element using the dispatchEvent() method like this:

element.dispatchEvent(event);Copy

For example, the following code shows how to create the click event and fire it on a button:

HTML:

<button class="btn">Test</button>Copy

JavaScript:

let btn = document.querySelector('.btn');

 btn.addEventListener('click', function () {
        alert('Mouse Clicked');
 });

let clickEvent = new Event('click');
btn.dispatchEvent(clickEvent);Copy

Click this link to see the demo.

In this example, the event handler is executed as if the click event were generated by user actions.

If the event comes from the user actions, the event.isTrusted property is set to true. In case the event is generated by code, the event.isTrusted is false. Therefore, you can examine the value of event.isTrusted property to check the “authenticity” of the event.

The Event is the base type of UIEvent which is the base type of other specific event types such as MouseEvent, TouchEvent, FocusEvent, and KeyboardEvent.

It’s a good practice to use the specialized event constructor like MouseEvent instead of using the generic Event type because these constructors provide more information specific to the events.

For example, the MouseEvent event has many other properties such as clientX and clientY that specify the horizontal and vertical coordinates at which the event occurred relative to the viewport:

let clickEvent = new MouseEvent("click", {
    bubbles: true,
    cancelable: true,
    clientX: 150,
    clientY: 150
});Copy

The following link shows the full list of properties of the MouseEvent

Summary #

• Use the specific event constructor such as MouseEvent and call dispatchEvent() method on an element to generate an event from code.
• Use event.isTrusted to examine whether the event is generated from code or user actions.