Question

I have a single form on my page with two ways of submitting it. The first is an anchor tag and the other is a submit button, both of them having different behaviours.

How can I assign to each a separate action method? Thanks.

Answer 1

It really depends on what the anchor tag does – presumably it’s triggering a submit in javascript?

If it’s actually just doing a GET instead of a POST, then you can do as @dbaseman suggests – have separate action methods for the two request types.

But if the anchor does javascript submit, then my preference would be to simply give the submit button a name so you can detect it on the server in one action method, and then fork the code from there:

<submit name="fromButtom" value="Submit" />

And then your action method:

public ActionResult Foo(string fromButton)
{
  //if 'fromButton' contains 'Submit' then you assume it was the button.
}

Even better you can use a <button> instead, and then you can divorce the displayed text from the value that the button submits (useful if you’re localising the page):

<button name="submitMethod" value="fromButton">Submit</button>

Now you can have a submitMethod parameter on your action method, in which you look for 'fromButton'.

Either way – the anchor tag/javascript (if that’s how you’re doing it) won’t submit this value, because the button’s value is only submitted when it’s clicked.