Definitive way to trigger keypress events with jQuery

Question

If you want to trigger the keypress or keydown event then all you have to do is:

var e = jQuery.Event("keydown");
e.which = 50; // # Some key code value
$("input").trigger(e);

Slightly more concise now with jQuery 1.6+:

var e = jQuery.Event( 'keydown', { which: $.ui.keyCode.ENTER } );

$('input').trigger(e);

(If you're not using jQuery UI, sub in the appropriate keycode instead.)

The real answer has to include keyCode:

var e = jQuery.Event("keydown");
e.which = 50; // # Some key code value
e.keyCode = 50
$("input").trigger(e);

Even though jQuery's website says that which and keyCode are normalized they are very badly mistaken. It's always safest to do the standard cross-browser checks for e.which and e.keyCode and in this case just define both.

If you're using jQuery UI too, you can do like this:

var e = jQuery.Event("keypress");
e.keyCode = $.ui.keyCode.ENTER;
$("input").trigger(e);

I made it work with keyup.

$("#id input").trigger('keyup');