Twitter Bootstrap. Why do modal events work in JQuery but NOT in pure JS?

The reasoning behind this is because Twitter Bootstrap uses that.$element.trigger('hidden.bs.modal')(line 997) to trigger it’s events. In other words it uses .trigger.

Now jQuery keeps track of each element’s event handlers (all .on or .bind or .click etc) using ._data. This is because there isn’t any other way to get the event handlers that are bound (using .addEventListener) to an element. So the trigger method actually just get’s the set event listener(s)/handler(s) from ._data(element, 'events') & ._data(element, 'handle') as an array and runs each of them.

handle = ( jQuery._data( cur, "events" ) || {} )[ event.type ] && jQuery._data( cur, "handle" );
if ( handle ) {
    handle.apply( cur, data );
}

(line 4548)

This means that no matter what context is, if an event is bound via .addEventListener it will not run using .trigger. Here’s an example. On load only jquery will be logged (triggered by .trigger). If you click the a element though, both will run.

$('a')[0].addEventListener('click', function(){console.log('addlistener');}, false);

$('a').on('click', function(){
    console.log('jquery');
});

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

DEMO

Alternatively, you can trigger an event on an element in javascript using fireEvent(ie) & dispatchEvent(non-ie). I don’t necessarily understand or know the reasoning of jQuery’s .trigger not doing this, but they may or may not have one. After a little more research I’ve found that they don’t do this because some older browsers only supported 1 event handler per event.

In general we haven’t tried to implement functionality that only works on some browsers (and some events) but not all, since someone will immediately file a bug that it doesn’t work right.

Although I do not recommend it, you can get around this with a minimal amount of changes to bootstraps code. You would just have to make sure that the function below is attached first (or you will have listeners firing twice).

$(modalID).on('hidden.bs.modal', function (e, triggered) {
    var event; // The custom event that will be created

    if(!triggered){
        return false;
    }

    e.preventDefault();
    e.stopImmediatePropagation();

    if (document.createEvent) {
        event = document.createEvent("HTMLEvents");
        event.initEvent("hidden.bs.modal", true, true);
    } else {
        event = document.createEventObject();
        event.eventType = "hidden.bs.modal";
    }

    event.eventName = "hidden.bs.modal";

    if (document.createEvent) {
        this.dispatchEvent(event);
    } else {
        this.fireEvent("on" + event.eventType, event);
    }
});

Finally change the Twitter Bootstrap line from above to:

that.$element.trigger('hidden.bs.modal', true)

This is so you know its being triggered and not the event that you’re firing yourself after. Please keep in mind I have not tried this code with the modal. Although it does work fine on the click demo below, it may or may not work as expected with the modal.

DEMO