CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsformsaction
kinopyo
kinopyo

Reputation: 1687

Rails: Multi-submit buttons in one Form

Say I have an Article model, and in the article 'new' view I have two buttons, "Publish" and "Save Draft".

My question is how can I know which button is clicked in the controller.

I already have a solution but I think there must be a better way. What I currently used in the view is:

<div class="actions">
  <%= f.submit "Publish" %>
  <%= f.submit "Save Draft", :name => "commit" %>
</div>

So in the controller, I can use the params[:commit] string to handle that action. 

def create
  @article = Article.new(params[:article])
  if params[:commit] == "Publish"
    @article.status = 'publish'
    // detail omitted
  end

  @article.save
end

But I think using the view related string is not good. Could you tell me another way to accomplish this?

UPDATE: Since these buttons are in the same form, they're all going to the 'create' action, and that's OK for me. What I want is to handle that within the create action, such as give the Article model a 'status' column and holds 'public' or 'draft'.

Upvotes: 69

Views: 41022

Answers (6)

Petros Kyriakou
Petros Kyriakou

Reputation: 5343

it can also be done on the form_for helper like this

 <%= f.submit "Publish",name: "publish", class: "tiny button radius success" %>
 <%= f.submit 'Mark as Draft', name: "draft", class: "tiny button radius " %>

and the logic is the same on the controller

   if params[:publish]
      // your code
   elsif params[:draft]
      // your code
   end

Upvotes: 9

John Topley
John Topley

Reputation: 115402

This was covered in Railscast episode 38. Using the params hash to detect which button was clicked is the correct approach:

View:

<%= submit_tag 'Create' %>
<%= submit_tag 'Create and Add Another', name: 'create_and_add' %>

Controller:

if params[:create_and_add]
  # Redirect to new form, for example.

else
  # Redirect to show the newly created record, for example.
end

Upvotes: 80

yonatan
yonatan

Reputation: 1

usually i using the suggestion given by John Topley (see answer above). another way is using JQuery /JS changing the form action attribute- upon clicking the submit button example:

form_tag({} ,:method => 'post', :id => 'reports_action') do 
   .......
   ....... 
  submit_tag 'submit',  :onclick => "return changeAction();"
end

and then .....

function changeAction(){
   $('#reports_action').attr('action','my_new_action');
}

Upvotes: 0

dennismonsewicz
dennismonsewicz

Reputation: 25552

You could also set some data attributes on the submit buttons and use JavaScript to change out the form action on click of one of the buttons

Upvotes: 0

siliconsenthil
siliconsenthil

Reputation: 1460

We solved using advanced constraints in rails.

The idea is to have the same path (and hence the same named route & action) but with constraints routing to different actions.

resources :plan do
  post :save, constraints: CommitParamRouting.new("Propose"), action: :propose
  post :save, constraints: CommitParamRouting.new("Finalize"), action: :finalize
end

CommitParamRouting is a simple class that has a method matches? which returns true if the commit param matches the given instance attr. value.

This available as a gem commit_param_matching.

Upvotes: 8

Alok Swain
Alok Swain

Reputation: 6519

I remember coming across this problem once. You cannot keep two buttons and then call some action based on the params[:commit]. the submit button onclick is going to call the url the form refers to. There are certain bad ways to get the desired behavior. Keep a button to call the action the form refers to and to get another button to call a action, I used a link_to and then changed the styles to match a button. Also, alternatively you can use jQuery to change the url the form would call, hence deciding what action is invoked at run-time. Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

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