Question

Does anybody know of a method to trigger an event in Prototype, as you can with jQuery’s trigger function?

I have bound an event listener using the observe method, but I would also like to be able to fire the event programatically.

Answer 1

event.simulate.js fits your needs.

I’ve used this several times and it works like a charm. It allows you to manually trigger native events, such as click or hover like so:

$('foo').simulate('click'); 

The great thing about this is that all attached event handlers will still be executed, just as if you would have clicked the element yourself.

For custom events you can use the standard prototype method Event.fire().