How to trigger('click') on jquery tab's currently active tab

Question

I have a tabed screen and want to trigger a click on the selected tab once the form is submitted and the return is valid. Here a part of the html:

Answer 1

Try using the a[href=""] selector:

$('#tabUL a[href="#tabProducts"]').trigger('click');

I put together a jsfiddle demo to show it in action, and how to optionally hide the other tabs since often when I'm programmatically forcing tabs its to require missing mandatory information be entered on the initial tab before unlocking the other tabs...

Edit Here is the contents of the jsfiddle:

HTML

<div id="tabs">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#tab0">Address</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tab1">Shipping</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tab2">Parts</a></li>
    <li><a href="#tab3">Datasheets</a></li>
  </ul>
  <div id="tab0">
        <h1>This is the first tab (0)</h1>
  </div>
  <div id="tab1">
     <h1>This is the second tab (1)</h1>
  </div>
  <div id="tab2">
     <h1>This is the third tab (2)</h1>
  </div>
  <div id="tab3">
     <h1>This is the fourth tab (3)</h1>
  </div>
</div>
<br/>
Select the
<select id="tabSelect">
  <option value="0">1st</option>
  <option value="1">2nd</option>
  <option value="2">3rd</option>
  <option value="3">4th</option>
</select>Tab and
<input type="checkbox" id="tabHide" checked="checked" /> Lock the Others

jQuery

$(document).ready(function () {
  $('#tabs').tabs();
  $('#tabSelect').change(function () {
        //pass empty array to unlock any locked tabs
    $('#tabs').tabs({disabled: []}).find('a[href="#tab' + $(this).val() + '"]').trigger('click');

    if ($('#tabHide').prop('checked')) {
      //hide will be an array like [0,2,3]
      var hide = Array();
      $('#tabs li').not('.ui-tabs-active').each(function () {
        hide.push($(this).index());
      });      
      $('#tabs').tabs({disabled: hide});
    }
  });
});

Answer 2

If you want to reload the tab programmatically then i recommend use Jquery Tab API utility like below: This makes first tab active and then activates second tab, quite simple and also raises the events that would be normally raised when you click directly.

$( "#myTabs" ).tabs( "option", "active", 0 );

$( "#myTabss" ).tabs( "option", "active", 1 );

Also you can catch tabs active event like below for performing any operations

$( "#myTabs" ).on( "tabsactivate", function( event, ui ) {
    // your custom code on tab click
});

Answer 3

rather than trying to trigger the click event itself (which I believe is not possible to invoke a user event programatically in this context), I suggest that you trigger the function that has to be called on click event, you might want to look into triggerHandler