asp.net mvc - Posting form to different MVC post action depending on the clicked submit button

Question

I am using ASP.Net MVC 4. I have multiple buttons on a view.. At present I am calling the same action method; and I am distinguishing the clicked button using a name attribute.

@using (Html.BeginForm("Submit", "SearchDisplay", new { id = Model == null ? Guid.NewGuid().ToString() : Model.SavedSearch }, FormMethod.Post))
{
    <div class="leftSideDiv">
        <input type="submit" id="btnExport" class="exporttoexcelButton" 
        name="Command" value="Export to Excel" />
    </div>

    <div class="pageWrapperForSearchSubmit">
        <input type="submit" class="submitButton" 
         value="Submit" id="btnSubmitChange" />
    </div>
}

//ACTION

    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Submit(SearchCostPage searchModel, string Command)
    {
        SessionHelper.ProjectCase = searchModel.ProjectCaseNumber;

        if (string.Equals(Command, Constants.SearchPage.ExportToExcel))
        {

        }
   }

QUESTIONS

1. Is there a way to direct to different POST action methods on different button clicks (without custom routing)?
2. If there is no way without custom routing, how can we do it with custom routing?

References:

1. Jimmy Bogard - Cleaning up POSTs in ASP.NET MVC

Answer 1

You can choose the url where the form must be posted (and thus, the invoked action) in different ways, depending on the browser support:

• for newer browsers that support HTML5, you can use formaction attribute of a submit button
• for older browsers that don't support this, you need to use some JavaScript that changes the form's action attribute, when the button is clicked, and before submitting

In this way you don't need to do anything special on the server side.

Of course, you can use Url extensions methods in your Razor to specify the form action.

For browsers supporting HMTL5: simply define your submit buttons like this:

<input type='submit' value='...' formaction='@Url.Action(...)' />

For older browsers I recommend using an unobtrusive script like this (include it in your "master layout"):

$(document).on('click', '[type="submit"][data-form-action]', function (event) {
  var $this = $(this);
  var formAction = $this.attr('data-form-action');
  $this.closest('form').attr('action', formAction);
});

NOTE: This script will handle the click for any element in the page that has type=submit and data-form-action attributes. When this happens, it takes the value of data-form-action attribute and set the containing form's action to the value of this attribute. As it's a delegated event, it will work even for HTML loaded using AJAX, without taking extra steps.

Then you simply have to add a data-form-action attribute with the desired action URL to your button, like this:

<input type='submit' data-form-action='@Url.Action(...)' value='...'/>

Note that clicking the button changes the form's action, and, right after that, the browser posts the form to the desired action.

As you can see, this requires no custom routing, you can use the standard Url extension methods, and you have nothing special to do in modern browsers.