Accessing HTML tags in a RUBY Controller - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have the following code in my HTML.erb
<form>
<input id="do" type="hidden" value="0" />
<button type="submit" value="Next">SUBTRACT</button>
</form>
<form>
<input id="do" type="hidden" value="1" />
<button type="submit" value="Next" >ADD</button>
</form>
Now When I click the any of the 2 buttons, I want to check the value of the input id="do" inside my Ruby Controller. What would the syntax look like ?

Answer 1

This should optimally be separated into two actions in the controller where each of the forms would submit (using the action attribute).
<form action='add'>
<input id="do" type="hidden" value="0" />
<button type="submit" value="Next">SUBTRACT</button>
</form>
<form action='subtract'>
<input id="do" type="hidden" value="1" />
<button type="submit" value="Next" >ADD</button>
</form>
#in your controller
def add
# do the addition processing
end
def subtract
# do the subtraction processing
end
If you really need to implement them in 1 action, then you could use Rails params object.

Answer 2

You need to set the name attributes, the name attributes get sent to the controller in the params hash
<form>
<input id="do" name="subtract" type="hidden" value="0" />
<button type="submit" value="Next">SUBTRACT</button>
</form>
<form>
<input id="do" name="add" type="hidden" value="1" />
<button type="submit" value="Next" >ADD</button>
</form>
In the controller,
the params[:subtract] or params[:add] will have the value depending on subtract clicked or add clicked .