How do you handle multiple submit buttons in ASP.N

Question

Is there some easy way to handle multiple submit buttons from the same form? Example:

<% Html.BeginForm("MyAction", "MyController", FormMethod.Post); %>
<input type="submit" value="Send" />
<input type="submit" value="Cancel" />
<% Html.EndForm(); %>

Any idea how to do this in ASP.NET Framework Beta? All examples I've googled for have single buttons in them.

Answer 1

You should be able to name the buttons and give them a value; then map this name as an argument to the action. Alternatively, use 2 separate action-links or 2 forms.

Answer 2

If your browser supports the attribute formaction for input buttons (IE 10+, not sure about other browsers) then the following should work:

@using (Html.BeginForm()){
    //put form inputs here

<input id="sendBtn" value="Send" type="submit" formaction="@Url.Action("Name Of Send Action")" />

<input id="cancelBtn" value="Cancel" type="submit" formaction="@Url.Action("Name of Cancel Action") />

}

Answer 3

I've tried to make a synthesis of all solutions and created a [ButtenHandler] attribute that makes it easy to handle multiple buttons on a form.

I've described it on CodeProject Multiple parameterized (localizable) form buttons in ASP.NET MVC.

To handle the simple case of this button:

<button type="submit" name="AddDepartment">Add Department</button>

You'll have something like the following action method:

[ButtonHandler()]
public ActionResult AddDepartment(Company model)
{
    model.Departments.Add(new Department());
    return View(model);
}

Notice how the name of the button matches the name of the action method. The article also describes how to have buttons with values and buttons with indexes.

Answer 4

You could write:

<% Html.BeginForm("MyAction", "MyController", FormMethod.Post); %>
<input type="submit" name="button" value="Send" />
<input type="submit" name="button" value="Cancel" />
<% Html.EndForm(); %>

And then in the page check if the name == "Send" or name == "Cancel"...

Answer 5

Here is what works best for me:

<input type="submit" value="Delete" name="onDelete" />
<input type="submit" value="Save" name="onSave" />


public ActionResult Practice(MyModel model, string onSave, string onDelete)
{
    if (onDelete != null)
    {
        // Delete the object
        ...
        return EmptyResult();
    }

    // Save the object
    ...
    return EmptyResult();
}

Answer 6

Eilon suggests you can do it like this:

If you have more than one button you can distinguish between them by giving each button a name:

<input type="submit" name="SaveButton" value="Save data" />
<input type="submit" name="CancelButton" value="Cancel and go back to main page" />

In your controller action method you can add parameters named after the HTML input tag names:

public ActionResult DoSomeStuff(string saveButton, string
cancelButton, ... other parameters ...)
{ ... }

If any value gets posted to one of those parameters, that means that button was the one that got clicked. The web browser will only post a value for the one button that got clicked. All other values will be null.

if (saveButton != null) { /* do save logic */ }
if (cancelButton != null) { /* do cancel logic */ }

I like this method as it does not rely on the value property of the submit buttons which is more likely to change than the assigned names and doesn't require javascript to be enabled

See: http://forums.asp.net/p/1369617/2865166.aspx#2865166