jQueryUI, radio button state, and click events

Question

I have a page with several sets of radio buttons that are used to set options. When one clicks on specific ones, others are selected by default using click event handlers. The functionality works perfectly, but there is an issue with the button's visual state.

I'm using jQueryUI's .buttonset() method to improve the aesthetics, and when I trigger a .click() event programatically, the button does not change state visually. This can result in the current options being quite different from what appears on screen.

Sample code to illustrate the problem:

<fieldset>
    <label for="button1">Button 1</label>
    <input type="radio" id="button1" name="test" />

    <label for="button2">Button 2</label>
    <input type="radio" id="button2" name="test" />
</fieldset>

$('fieldset').buttonset();

$('#button2').click(function() {
    alert('button 2 clicked');
});

$('#button2').click();

​I also set up a fiddle so you can see it in action, if you so desire: http://jsfiddle.net/T5MGh/

As you would expect, the alert box pops up on page load as it should, but the button does not change visually as it does from a user-click.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

You can click the actual label that the button set uses, like this:

$('[for=button2]').click();

This works because your structure looks like this after .buttonset():

<fieldset class="ui-buttonset">
    <label for="button1" aria-pressed="false" class="ui-button ui-widget ui-state-default ui-button-text-only ui-corner-left" role="button" aria-disabled="false"><span class="ui-button-text">Button 1</span></label>
    <input type="radio" id="button1" name="test" class="ui-helper-hidden-accessible">

    <label for="button2" aria-pressed="true" class="ui-button ui-widget ui-state-default ui-button-text-only ui-corner-right ui-state-active ui-state-hover" role="button" aria-disabled="false"><span class="ui-button-text">Button 2</span></label>
    <input type="radio" id="button2" name="test" class="ui-helper-hidden-accessible">
</fieldset>

It doesn't work initially because of how jQuery UI does it, it relies on the click coming through the <label>, and the defult browser behavior actually clicking the <input> from that.

Answer 2

It may appear that in more recent versions of jQuery / jQuery UI, the behavior has changed, rendering the behavior of the original code posted as this question to what the author of this question wanted (clicking the button from code takes care of both invoking the event and visually changing the button).

You can see that in the referenced jsfiddle as well. So it seems this answer is only relevant for older versions of jQuery / jQuery UI.