How do you handle multiple submit buttons in ASP.NET MVC Framework?

Question

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

<% Html.BeginForm(\"MyAction\", \"MyController\", FormMethod.Pos         


        

Answer 1

Here's an extension method I wrote to handle multiple image and/or text buttons.

Here's the HTML for an image button:

or for a text submit button :

Here is the extension method you call from the controller with form.GetSubmitButtonName(). For image buttons it looks for a form parameter with .x (which indicates an image button was clicked) and extracts the name. For regular input buttons it looks for a name beginning with Submit_ and extracts the command from afterwards. Because I'm abstracting away the logic of determining the 'command' you can switch between image + text buttons on the client without changing the server side code.

public static class FormCollectionExtensions
{
    public static string GetSubmitButtonName(this FormCollection formCollection)
    {
        return GetSubmitButtonName(formCollection, true);
    }

    public static string GetSubmitButtonName(this FormCollection formCollection, bool throwOnError)
    {
        var imageButton = formCollection.Keys.OfType().Where(x => x.EndsWith(".x")).SingleOrDefault();
        var textButton = formCollection.Keys.OfType().Where(x => x.StartsWith("Submit_")).SingleOrDefault();

        if (textButton != null)
        {
            return textButton.Substring("Submit_".Length);
        }

        // we got something like AddToCart.x
        if (imageButton != null)
        {
            return imageButton.Substring(0, imageButton.Length - 2);
        }

        if (throwOnError)
        {
            throw new ApplicationException("No button found");
        }
        else
        {
            return null;
        }
    }
}

Note: For text buttons you have to prefix the name with Submit_. I prefer this way becuase it means you can change the text (display) value without having to change the code. Unlike SELECT elements, an INPUT button has only a 'value' and no separate 'text' attribute. My buttons say different things under different contexts - but map to the same 'command'. I much prefer extracting the name this way than having to code for == "Add to cart".