How to simulate the clicking of a hyperlink?

Question

Say I have 2 links a1 and a2, and a2 is hidden. When the user clicks on a1, I want to simulate the clicking of a2. How can this be done with jQuery?

See this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1839363/simulating-a-click-in-jquery-javascript-on-a-link — codingbadger, Jul 28 '10 at 17:13
Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1421584/how-can-i-simulate-a-click-to-an-anchor-tag/ — Bogdan Constantinescu, Jul 28 '10 at 17:16

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 28 '10 at 17:34

It depends on what you mean by "simulate the clicking of a2".

Assuming that a1 and a2 are ID attributes, if you mean that you want to trigger the jQuery handler on that element, you can do this:

$("#a1").click(function(){ 
    $("#a2").trigger('click'); 
});

If you want to trigger it without bubbling the event or triggering the default behavior, do this:

$("#a1").click(function(){ 
    $("#a2").triggerHandler('click'); 
});

But if you wanted to actually visit the associated href location, you would need this:

$("#a1").click(function() { 
    window.location = $("#a2").attr('href'); 
});

or

$("#a1").click(function() { 
    window.location = document.getElementById('a2').href; 
});

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 28 '10 at 17:14

6

$("#a1").click(function(){ $("#a2").click(); });

answered Jul 28 '10 at 17:14

hunter

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 28 '10 at 20:18

0

The other answers cover your options as far as solutions go, but to improve your understanding of how jQuery works particular regarding event binding for clicks, I recommend looking over the jQuery API documentation for click().

answered Jul 28 '10 at 20:18

calvinf

3,754
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How to simulate the clicking of a hyperlink?

3 Answers3