Why does .fireEvent() not trigger in IE9?

Question

Rather frustrating time here with IE9. This code works in IE7/8, but not 9.

document.getElementById('id').fireEvent("OnChange");

Any insight as to why?

Solution

In IE versions >= 9 and all other browsers you should use the dispatchEvent method:

var event = document.createEvent("HTMLEvents");
event.initEvent("change",true,false);

document.getElementById("id").dispatchEvent(event);

Check out http://jsfiddle.net/QKsvv/

Comments

[Tyler]

By checking if (id.dispatchEvent) then else if (id.fireEvent) I can now use the non-ie8 code to work for ie9. Looks like IE is finally catching on?

[Strelok]

That's right. You can extract the firing code into a separate method that will handle all browsers.

[Mike 'Pomax' Kamermans]

As additional information, this only works for elements that are in the live DOM. If you dynamically make objects and want to simulate things like clicks on them using dispatchEvent, you have to add them to the DOM first. If you don't, you can still dispatch events, but you'll be tearing your hair out wondering why the function runs successfully without triggering your event handler.