title: How to trigger Angular handlers programmatically?
body: <p>I have a form element with an ng-change handler.  I want to programmatically trigger the handler, but without direct inspection of scope.  I want to do this because I'm writing a Chrome extension so I can't easily access '$scope' to get the handler.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried the obvious choice of</p>
  
  <pre><code>$(element).triggerHandler('change')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but that doesn't seem to work.  See example here: <a href="https://plnkr.co/edit/iaz7trxVT09XWBktGhE9?p=preview" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://plnkr.co/edit/iaz7trxVT09XWBktGhE9?p=preview</a> (in this example I'm logging some lines to console when the change handler runs, but clicking the button doesn't log those lines).</p>
  
  <p>I tried a few other methods found in various threads here, such as trigger() or manual construction of event and fire with dispatchEvent but to no avail.  I don't quite understand why the event handler isn't triggering.  Can anyone help?</p>