jQuery AutoComplete Trigger Change Event

How do you trigger jQuery UI's AutoComplete change event handler programmatically?

Hookup

$("#CompanyList").autocomplete({ 
    source: context.companies, 
    change: handleCompanyChanged 
});

Misc Attempts Thus Far

$("#CompanyList").change();
$("#CompanyList").trigger("change");
$("#CompanyList").triggerHandler("change");

Based on other answers it should work:

How to trigger jQuery change event in code

jQuery Autocomplete and on change Problem

JQuery Autocomplete help

The change event fires as expected when I manually interact with the AutoComplete input via browser; however I would like to programmatically trigger the change event in some cases.

What am I missing?

Here you go. It's a little messy but it works.

$(function () {  
  var companyList = $("#CompanyList").autocomplete({ 
      change: function() {
          alert('changed');
      }
   });
   companyList.autocomplete('option','change').call(companyList);
});

this will work,too

$("#CompanyList").autocomplete({
  source : yourSource,
  change : yourChangeHandler
})

// deprecated
//$("#CompanyList").data("autocomplete")._trigger("change")
// use this now
$("#CompanyList").data("ui-autocomplete")._trigger("change")

It's better to use the select event instead. The change event is bound to keydown as Wil said. So if you want to listen to change on selection use select like that.

$("#yourcomponent").autocomplete({  
    select: function(event, ui) {
        console.log(ui);
    }
});

They are binding to keydown in the autocomplete source, so triggering the keydown will case it to update.

$("#CompanyList").trigger('keydown');

They aren't binding to the 'change' event because that only triggers at the DOM level when the form field loses focus. The autocomplete needs to respond faster than 'lost focus' so it has to bind to a key event.

Doing this:

companyList.autocomplete('option','change').call(companyList);

Will cause a bug if the user retypes the exact option that was there before.