how to programmatically fake a touch event to a UIButton?

It turns out that

[buttonObj sendActionsForControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

got me exactly what I needed, in this case.

EDIT: Don't forget to do this in the main thread, to get results similar to a user-press.

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For Swift 3:

buttonObj.sendActions(for: .touchUpInside)

If you want to do this kind of testing, you’ll love the UI Automation support in iOS 4. You can write JavaScript to simulate button presses, etc. fairly easily, though the documentation (especially the getting-started part) is a bit sparse.

An update to this answer for Swift

buttonObj.sendActionsForControlEvents(.TouchUpInside)

EDIT: Updated for Swift 3

buttonObj.sendActions(for: .touchUpInside)

Swift 3:

self.btn.sendActions(for: .touchUpInside)