fireEvent Method (A, ABBR, ACRONYM, ...)

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Classic
Lightweight
ScriptFree
fireEvent Method

Fires a specified event on the object.

Syntax 

bFired = object.fireEvent(sEvent [, oEventObject])

Parameters

sEvent Required. String that specifies the name of the event to fire.
oEventObject Optional. Object that specifies the event object from which to obtain event object properties.

Return Value

Boolean. Returns one of the following values:

true
Event fired successfully.
false
Event was canceled.

Remarks

If the event being fired cannot be canceled, fireEvent always returns true.

Regardless of their values specified in the event object, the values of the four event properties— cancelBubble, returnValue, srcElement, and type—are automatically initialized to the values shown in the following table.

Event object property Value
cancelBubble false
returnValue true
srcElement element on which the event is fired
type name of the event that is fired

Example

The following sample shows how to use the fireEvent method.


<html>

<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function fnFireEvents()
{
oDiv.innerText = "The cursor has moved over me!";
oButton.fireEvent("onclick");
}
</script>
</head>

<body>

<h1>fireEvent Method Sample</h1>
<p>By moving the cursor over the <strong>div</strong> below, the button is clicked.</p>
<div id="oDiv" onmouseover="fnFireEvents();">
    Mouse over this! </div>
<p><button id="oButton" onclick="this.innerText='I have been clicked!'">Button
</button></p>

</body>

</html>

Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/fireEventEX1.htm

Standards Information

There is no public standard that applies to this method.

Applies To

A, ABBR, ACRONYM, ADDRESS, APPLET, AREA, B, BASE, BASEFONT, BDO, BGSOUND, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BR, BUTTON, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, COMMENT, CUSTOM, DD, DEL, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, EMBED, FIELDSET, FONT, FORM, FRAME, FRAMESET, HEAD, hn, HR, HTML, I, IFRAME, IMG, INPUT type=button, INPUT type=checkbox, INPUT type=file, INPUT type=hidden, INPUT type=image, INPUT type=password, INPUT type=radio, INPUT type=reset, INPUT type=submit, INPUT type=text, INS, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LINK, LISTING, MAP, MARQUEE, MENU, nextID, NOBR, NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT, OBJECT, OL, OPTION, P, PLAINTEXT, PRE, Q, RT, RUBY, S, SAMP, SCRIPT, SELECT, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, styleSheet, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TITLE, TR, TT, U, UL, VAR, WBR, XML, XMP, Element Constructor, HTMLDocument Constructor

See Also

createEventObject
Community Content

Page Notes
fireEvent isn't fully implemented

Following GMariani's tip, I attached fireEvent to a paragraph element and tested it against the all of the event names IE recognizes.  For 59 of the event names, fireEvent returned true.  For the following 20 events names, fireEvent returned the Invalid Argument error:  

onabort onafterprint onbeforeprint onbeforeunload onbounce onchange onerror onfinish onhashchange onload onmessage onoffline ononline onreset onselect onselectionchange onstart onstop onsubmit onunload

When I used fireEvent to trigger onmouseover, it returned false.  


john jst
Simulating Mouse Click on a Client Side Image Map
I need to simulate a mouse click on a client side image map. Which object should invoke the fireEvent()? It cannot be simply the <area> object since it could be referenced by 2 different <img>'s. It cannot be the <img> since we need a way to tell which part of the img is clicked which is defined in the <area> tag?

I've done some test with real mouse click on an client side image map. The event object generated from my click indicates (by the window.event.srcElement property) the event is generated from <area> tag. But when I tried to programmatically call the <area>'s fireEvent(), nothing happened!

Does IE actually support simulating click on a client side image map?

GMariani
Firing Events
Why can't you fire an onChange event from the DIV tag?