opensoul.org - Handling forms with multiple buttons Comments

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Brandon

2007-08-28T02:17:48Z

Jeremy,

My plugin isn’t doing any special handling for Ajax requests, but I believe Prototype 1.6 has had some improvements in the form serialization code, so it may not be an issue anymore.

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Jeremy

2007-08-27T21:41:22Z

I’ve noticed a problem in the past, when doing this kind of thing, where submitting a form via ajax causes it to send all the buttons’ information, so rails doesn’t know which button was pressed. Does your plugin deal with that?

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Brandon

2007-08-17T15:07:41Z

David,

It does sound like it’s not installed right. I would just try removing the plugin and installing it again. Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you.

script/plugin install http://source.collectiveidea.com/public/rails/plugins/with_action

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by David

2007-08-12T22:20:45Z

Hi, I just installed this plugin but my code throws the following error:

undefined method `with_action’ for #<locationscontroller:0x466728c>

My guess is that I may not have installed the plugin correctly. How can I fix this?

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by John Nunemaker

2007-07-31T03:08:19Z

Just installed this and gave it a try. Super nice work.

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Justin

2007-07-29T14:05:02Z

Awesome! I’m so glad I won’t be doing this with if/else anymore…

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Matt Secoske

2007-07-19T12:31:53Z

Very elegant!

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Sam Nardoni

2007-07-17T12:34:27Z

Perfect, just what I’m looking for.

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Brandon

2007-07-17T04:58:44Z

nkryptic,

That’s a great point. You would hope that “most” of the time people would hit cancel before the select any file uploads.

Usually I just use a cancel link, but in this situation I decided it looked bad to have 3 buttons and then a cancel link. But maybe, to get uniformity, I’ll have to switch to using images for the inputs and then just an image as a link for the cancel button.

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by nkryptic

2007-07-17T00:42:38Z

One thing I wonder is whether the “cancel” button is a bad idea. If your form contains a file upload field, clicking cancel will upload the file first, before you are redirected, no?

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Chris

2007-07-16T20:18:11Z

This is great stuff. Definitely bookmarked for future reference. :D

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Matt Aimonetti

2007-07-16T19:42:23Z

Good stuff Brandon. You solution might get a big confusing if you add too many any nested blocks but it’s still a very clean way of dealing with the issue you were facing.

Thanks for the plugin, I’ll keep it handy in case I have to do the same thing soon.

Matt

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Eric Anderson

2007-07-16T19:25:05Z

I can see you point. Not only does my method not work with JavaScript but it actually could do the wrong thing. Perhaps something along the lines of _method then. If you submit buttons look like:


<%=submit_tag 'update', :name => '_method'%>
<%=submit_tag 'destroy', :name => '_method'%>


That should produce tags that without JavaScript change the action based on what button is pressed (assuming a RESTful setup). Obviously this is fairly limited and flaky but if you did something along those lines so that the value of “commit” would determine the action (would require a Rails plugin). You could get the redirects out of your action (keeping them clean) while still not relying on JavaScript.

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Brandon

2007-07-16T13:22:50Z

Eric,

That’s another option. But one of the ideals that I try to uphold with JavaScript is to make it fail gracefully. I don’t care if something doesn’t work without JavaScript, but it shouldn’t cause it to behave differently (i.e. Cancel button causes it to save the form).

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Eric Anderson

2007-07-16T12:57:44Z

I’ve always handled stuff like this by changing the action with JavaScript. Basically my submit button has an onclick callback that will update the action for the form to the right URL. I see the tradeoffs as:

Your method:

allows the app to work without Javascript
is packaged up in a nice plugin
dirties up your actions (for example your “create” method above has to care about editing, approving, etc)

My method:

Keeps the server-side actions clean and RESTful
Requires Javascript
In not packaged up in a nice plugin

I can see both methods useful depending on the needs of the situation. Makes me now want to package my method up as a nice plugin. Maybe something like:


submit_tag 'Approve',
  :action => approval_path(@article)

which would generate the tag with the necessary JavaScript to update the action.

Comment on 'Handling forms with multiple buttons' by Joerg Battermann

2007-07-16T12:49:36Z

Nice!