Web/API/EventTarget/dispatchEvent

Dispatches an Event at the specified EventTarget, (synchronously) invoking the affected EventListeners in the appropriate order. The normal event processing rules (including the capturing and optional bubbling phase) also apply to events dispatched manually with dispatchEvent().

Syntax

cancelled = !target.dispatchEvent(event)

Parameter

• event is the Event object to be dispatched.
• target is used to initialize the Event.target and determine which event listeners to invoke.

Return Value

• The return value is false if event is cancelable and at least one of the event handlers which received event called Event.preventDefault(). Otherwise it returns true.

The dispatchEvent() method throws UNSPECIFIED_EVENT_TYPE_ERR if the event's type was not specified by initializing the event before the method was called, or if the event's type is null or an empty string.

Exceptions

Exceptions thrown by event handlers are reported as uncaught exceptions. The event handlers run on a nested callstack; they block the caller until they complete, but exceptions do not propagate to the caller.

Notes

Unlike "native" events, which are fired by the DOM and invoke event handlers asynchronously via the event loop, dispatchEvent() invokes event handlers synchronously. All applicable event handlers will execute and return before the code continues on after the call to dispatchEvent().

dispatchEvent() is the last step of the create-init-dispatch process, which is used for dispatching events into the implementation's event model. The event can be created using Event constructor.

See also the Event object reference.

Example

See Creating and triggering events.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
DOMThe definition of 'EventTarget.dispatchEvent()' in that specification.	Living Standard	Initial definition in the DOM 2 Events specification.

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
dispatchEvent	Chrome Full support 4	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 2	IE Full support 9 Full support 9 No support 6 — 11 Notes' Alternate Name' Notes' Older versions of IE supported an equivalent, proprietary EventTarget.fireEvent() method. Alternate Name' Uses the non-standard name: fireEvent	Opera Full support 9	Safari Full support 3.2	WebView Android Full support 4	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support 10.1	Safari iOS Full support 3	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

See implementation notes.'

See implementation notes.

Uses a non-standard name.'

Uses a non-standard name.

EventTarget.dispatchEvent() by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.