Rails: Multi-submit buttons in one Form - ruby-on-rails

Question

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'.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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');
}