jQuery: trigger click() doesn't work?

From what your code looks like, you want when a user clicks on link one or two (trigger 1 or 2) you want the link in open to be followed?

If this is the case, .click() isn't actually the function you want, in fact jQuery doesn't seem to offer a method of directly clicking on an anchor element. What it will do is trigger any event's which are attached to an element.

Take a look at this example:

<a id="trigger" href="#" onclick="$('#open').click();">trigger</a>
<a id="open" href="http://google.com">open</a>

jQuery:

$('#open').click(function(){
    alert('I just got clicked!'); 
});

Try it here

So there is an event attached to the element with the ID open that simply alerts to say it was clicked. Clicking on the trigger link simply triggers the click event on the element with the ID open. So it's not going to do what you want! It will fire any events but it won't actually follow the link
I removed the 2nd trigger because .click() is just a proxy for .trigger('click') so they do the same thing!

So to trigger an actual click on an anchor, you will have to do a little more work. To make this slightly more reuseable I would change your HTML a little (I'll expain why in a moment):

<a href="#" class="trigger" rel="#open">trigger google</a>
<a id="open" href="http://google.com">google</a>
<br/><br/>
<a href="#" class="trigger" rel="#bing">trigger bing</a>
<a id="bing" href="http://bing.com">bing</a>

jQuery (shortest):

$('.trigger').click(function(e){
    e.preventDefault();
    window.location = $($(this).attr('rel')).attr('href');
});

Try it here

OR:

$('.trigger').click(function(e){
    e.preventDefault();
    var obj = $(this).attr('rel');
    var link = $(obj).attr('href');
    window.location = link;
});

Try it here

Basically any link you want to follow another element add the class="trigger" to, this way it is re-useable. In the element you have added the class to, add a rel="#element-to-be-clicked" this will allow you to setup multiple clicks on different links.

• So you are now capturing any clicks on an element with the class="trigger"
• Finding the element you wanted to be clicked on rel="#element-to-be-clicked"
• Getting the href address from the element
• Changing the windows location to the new link

try with removing onclick="jQuery('#open').click();"

Also try to putting $('#trigger1') you are using jQuery('#trigger3')

On JSFIDDLE here.

you are binding event click to #trigger3 twice. remove one of them

Try this:

jQuery(document).ready(function(){    
  jQuery('#trigger3').bind('click', function(){
      jQuery('#open').text('to be fired'); /* works */
      jQuery('#open').click();        
  });

  jQuery('#trigger3').click(function(){
      jQuery('#open').text('to be fired'); /* works */
      jQuery('#open').click();
  });
});

jQuery('#open').html('to be fired'); will change the to just a text. That's why the 2nd select doesn't work.

There is 3 types of links depending of the href content :

1) The href is a url
2) The href is a javascript call like "javascript:"
3) The href is useless ("#", "javascript:void(0)", ...), the function is directly bound on the link

That's why I make this little plugin to call the good method :

(function( $ ){
  $.fn.triggerClick = function() {
      var href = $(this).attr('href');
      //No useful link into href, try to call js click
      if(href.indexOf('#') == 0 || href.indexOf('javascript:void(') == 0 || href == '') {
         $(this).click();
      //JS call
      } else if(href.indexOf('javascript:') == 0) {
         eval(href);
      //URL
      } else {
         document.location.href = href;
      }
    };
  })( jQuery );

To call it, just use $('DOMelement').triggerClick().
Hope this could help. (This plugin is a prototype. Thank's to tell me if there is some errors...)