determine-which-button-submitted-the-form.md

Determine Which Button Submitted The Form

It is pretty common for a form to have a singular submit button. If the user clicks 'Submit', then the form fires a POST off to the server, the server can process the request, and that's it.

But what about a form that has two or more buttons? For instance, imagine some kind of consent form where the user needs to either Accept or Reject some terms.

Just like other inputs, the <button> tag can take both name and value attributes.

<form action="/terms" method="post">
  <p>Something about the terms ...</p>
  <div>
    <label for="name">Email: </label>
    <input type="email" name="email" id="email" required>
  </div>
  <div>
    <button type="submit" name="commit" value="accept">Accept</button>
    <button type="submit" name="commit" value="reject">Reject</button>
  </div>
</form>

In addition to the email attribute, when the user submits the form, it will include a commit attribute that has a value of either 'accept' or 'reject'.

Naming it commit is a convention I'm borrowing from Rails's form helpers. You can name it whatever makes sense to you.