Programmatically trigger a click event with jquery [duplicate]

I have seen some jquery code where it appears that a click event is triggered programmatically like so:

$sortElements.on('keydown', function(e) {
  if (e.which === 13 || e.which === 32) {
    e.preventDefault();
    if ($(this).is('a')) {
      e.target.click();
    } else {
      $(this).click();
    }
  }
});

Is this a best practice and or is there a better way to do this?

Also, I have read that the jquery short hand for click is deprecated and the correct way is to write:

$(elem).on("click", function(){})

I don't think it's possible to programmatically trigger a click using this new format however.