Programmatical click on <a>-tag not working in Firefox

Solution 1:

In Firefox, you can explicitly add the created element to the DOM and it will work:

$('body').on('click', '#test', function(event) {
    var link = document.createElement('a');
    // Add the element to the DOM
    link.setAttribute("type", "hidden"); // make it hidden if needed
    link.download = 'test.xls';
    link.href = 'data:application/vnd.ms-excel;utf-8,test';
    document.body.appendChild(link);
    link.click();
    link.remove();
});

Fiddle

Solution 2:

You don't have to add the element to the DOM, even in FireFox. Replace the .click() method with the following code:

link.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(`click`, {bubbles: true, cancelable: true, view: window}));

$('button').on('click', function(event) {
    var link = document.createElement('a');
    link.download = 'test.xls';
    link.href = 'data:application/vnd.ms-excel;utf-8,test';
    link.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent('click', {bubbles: true, cancelable: true, view: window}));
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<button>Download</button>

Solution 3:

Add the element to the DOM before triggering the click:

document.body.appendChild(link);
link.click();
document.body.removeChild(link);

This worked for me in all the major browsers