jQuery advantages/differences in .trigger() vs .click()

Question

In terms of performance, what are the gains (or just differences) between:

$('.myEl').click(); 

and

$('.myEl').trigger('click'); 

Are there any at all?

Answer 1

This is the code for the click method:

jQuery.fn.click = function (data, fn) {     if (fn == null) {         fn = data;         data = null;     }      return arguments.length > 0 ? this.on("click", null, data, fn) : this.trigger("click"); } 

as you can see; if no arguments are passed to the function it will trigger the click event.

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Using .trigger("click") will call one less function.

And as @Sandeep pointed out in his answer .trigger("click") is faster:

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As of 1.9.0 the check for data and fn has been moved to the .on function:

$.fn.click = function (data, fn) {     return arguments.length > 0 ? this.on("click", null, data, fn) : this.trigger("click"); } 

Answer 2

i think that

$('.myEl').trigger('click'); 

is better because it saves you a function call as $('.myEl').click(); just calls that funciton. Look at the code from jQuery source

jQuery.each( ("blur focus focusin focusout load resize scroll unload click dblclick " +     "mousedown mouseup mousemove mouseover mouseout mouseenter mouseleave " +     "change select submit keydown keypress keyup error contextmenu").split(" "), function( i, name ) {      // Handle event binding     jQuery.fn[ name ] = function( data, fn ) {         if ( fn == null ) {             fn = data;             data = null;         }          return arguments.length > 0 ?             this.on( name, null, data, fn ) :                     //here they call trigger('click'); if you provide no arguments             this.trigger( name );     };      if ( jQuery.attrFn ) {         jQuery.attrFn[ name ] = true;     }      if ( rkeyEvent.test( name ) ) {         jQuery.event.fixHooks[ name ] = jQuery.event.keyHooks;     }      if ( rmouseEvent.test( name ) ) {         jQuery.event.fixHooks[ name ] = jQuery.event.mouseHooks;     } });