Mvc Html.ActionButton

Question

Has anyone written one? I want it to behave like a link but look like a button. A form with a single button wont do it has I don't want any POST.

Answer 1

The easiest way to do it is to have a small form tag with method="get", in which you place a submit button:

<form method="get" action="/myController/myAction/">
    <input type="submit" value="button text goes here" />
</form>

You can of course write a very simple extension method that takes the button text and a RouteValueDictionary (or an anonymous type with the routevalues) and builds the form so you won't have to re-do it everywhere.

EDIT: In response to cdmckay's answer, here's an alternative code that uses the TagBuilder class instead of a regular StringBuilder to build the form, mostly for clarity:

using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Mvc.Html;
using System.Web.Routing;

namespace MvcApplication1
{
    public static class HtmlExtensions
    {
     public static string ActionButton(this HtmlHelper helper, string value, 
                              string action, string controller, object routeValues)
     {
      var a = (new UrlHelper(helper.ViewContext.RequestContext))
         .Action(action, controller, routeValues);

      var form = new TagBuilder("form");
      form.Attributes.Add("method", "get");
      form.Attributes.Add("action", a);

      var input = new TagBuilder("input");
      input.Attributes.Add("type", "submit");
      input.Attributes.Add("value", value);

      form.InnerHtml = input.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing);

      return form.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
     }
    }
}

Also, as opposed to cdmckay's code, this one will actually compile ;) I am aware that there might be quite a lot of overhead in this code, but I am expecting that you won't need to run it a lot of times on each page. In case you do, there is probably a bunch of optimizations that you could do.

Answer 2

Code for Tomas' answer:

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
  public static string ActionButton(this HtmlHelper helper, string value, 
      string action, string controller, object routeValues)
  {
    UrlHelper urlHelper = new UrlHelper(helper.ViewContext);
    var action = urlHelper.Action(action, controller, routeValues);

    var html = new StringBuilder();
    html.AppendFormat("<form method='get' action'{0}'>", action).AppendLine()
        .AppendFormat("    <input type='submit' value='{0}' />", value).AppendLine()
        .AppendFormat("</form>").AppendLine();

    return html.ToString();
  }
}

Answer 3

If you want it to behave like a link but "look" like a button just use the ActionLink with a CSS Class.

<%: Html.ActionLink("Back", "Index", null, new { @class = "link-button" })%>

Here is the CSS for a Button that I am using.

.link-button {
    -moz-border-radius:0.333em 0.333em 0.333em 0.333em;
    -moz-box-shadow:0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);
    background:-moz-linear-gradient(center top , white, #306AB5 4%, #274976) repeat scroll 0 0 transparent;
    border-color:#306AB5 #2B5892 #274771;
    border-style:solid;
    border-width:1px;
    color:white;
    cursor:pointer;
    display:inline-block;
    font-size:1.167em;
    font-weight:bold;
    line-height:1.429em;
    padding:0.286em 1em 0.357em;
    text-shadow:0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);
}


.link-button {
    color: white;
    border-color: #a1a7ae #909498 #6b7076;
    background: #9fa7b0 url(../images/old-browsers-bg/button-element-grey-bg.png) repeat-x top;
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(
        top,
        white,
        #c5cbce 5%,
        #9fa7b0
    );
    background: -webkit-gradient(
        linear,
        left top, left bottom,
        from(white),
        to(#9fa7b0),
        color-stop(0.05, #c5cbce)
    );
    -moz-text-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
    -webkit-text-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
    text-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
    -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
    box-shadow: 0 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2);
    }
    .link-button:hover {
        border-color: #a1a7b0 #939798 #6e7275;
        background: #b1b5ba url(../images/old-browsers-bg/button-element-grey-hover-bg.png) repeat-x top;
        background: -moz-linear-gradient(
            top,
            white,
            #d6dadc 4%,
            #b1b5ba
        );
        background: -webkit-gradient(
            linear,
            left top, left bottom,
            from(white),
            to(#b1b5ba),
            color-stop(0.03, #d6dadc)
        );
    }
    .link-button:active {
        border-color: #666666 #ffffff #ffffff #979898;
        background: #dddddd url(../images/old-browsers-bg/button-element-grey-active-bg.png) repeat-x top;
        background: -moz-linear-gradient(
            top,
            #f1f1f1,
            #dddddd
        );
        background: -webkit-gradient(
            linear,
            left top, left bottom,
            from(#f1f1f1),
            to(#dddddd)
        );
    }