EventTarget: dispatchEvent() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2021.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The dispatchEvent() method of the EventTarget sends an Event to the object, (synchronously) invoking the affected event listeners in the appropriate order. The normal event processing rules (including the capturing and optional bubbling phase) also apply to events dispatched manually with dispatchEvent().

Calling dispatchEvent() is the last step to firing an event. The event should have already been created and initialized using an Event() constructor.

Note: When calling this method, the Event.target property is initialized to the current EventTarget.

Unlike "native" events, which are fired by the browser and invoke event handlers asynchronously via the event loop, dispatchEvent() invokes event handlers synchronously. All applicable event handlers are called and return before dispatchEvent() returns.

Syntax

js
dispatchEvent(event)

Parameters

event

The Event object to dispatch. Its Event.target property will be set to the current EventTarget.

Return value

false if event is cancelable, and at least one of the event handlers which received event called Event.preventDefault(). Otherwise true.

Exceptions

InvalidStateError DomException

Thrown if the event's type was not specified during event initialization.

Warning: 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.

Example

See Creating and triggering events.

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-eventtarget-dispatchevent③

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also