Multiple submit button in a form

Question

Hey I am very new to Web Programming. I have been learning PHP from the past few days and I am stuck at one thing.

I have a form tag in my code which has two submit buttons to manipulate on the data. Since I can have only one action definition on my form tag, it can lead me to one page only. (Not very sure)

Now depending on the button clicked on the form, I want to load a different page. One way is to check the button clicked in an if-else construct and then use echo '...' in the branches and show as if it is a different page. But it doesn't seem right for some reason. Can some one give me a better solution? Thanks.

Answer 1

One way is to use Javascript to switch the form's action depending on which control has been clicked. The following example uses the jQuery library:

<form id="theForm" action="foo.php">
...
    <input id="first" type="submit"/>
    <input id="second" type="submit"/>
</form>​

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("#theForm input").click(function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        if(e.target.id == 'first') {
            $("#theForm").attr("action", "somePage.php");
        } else {
            $("#theForm").attr("action", "anotherPage.php");
        }
        alert($("#theForm").attr("action"));
        $("#theForm").submit(); 
    });
​});​

Demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/CMEqC/2/

Answer 2

But it doesn't seem right for some reason.

That's wrong assumption.
Any other solution would be much worst.

Checking on the server side is the only reliable solution.
However echo in branches isn't necessary. There are a lot other ways.
To use include statement is most obvious one.

Answer 3

to add another solution based on @karim79's, since it's tagged with PHP:

<form id="theForm" action="foo.php">
...
    <input id="first" name="button" value="first" type="submit"/>
    <input id="second" name="button" value="second" type="submit"/>
</form>​

in your foo.php, do something like this:

<?php
$submit = isset($_GET['button']) ? trim($_GET['button']) : '';

if($submit == 'first')
{
   header('Location: somePage.php');
}
else if($submit == 'second')
{
   header('Location: anotherPage.php');
}
?>

Summary: to be able to read on your button (2 submit buttons), you need to add name on each one. To make it simple, just use the same name on both. Then, add different value. Next, you need to know what button is being clicked by checking what value is sent on that particular button.

Answer 4

just as a reference... int HTML5 buttons can redefine the form's action,method,type etc. http://w3schools.com/html5/tag_button.asp for me, that's a good way to control a form :)