PHP: Handling Multiple Submit Buttons

Would like to get a consensus as to what the best practice is in this scenario:

Muliple submit buttons, is it better to handle this by having separate FORMS f开发者_StackOverflow中文版or each one of the submits, OR is it okay to have one form and check which button was pressed?

thank you for your input :D

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Assuming you're doing this solely in PHP, just change the values for each button and check for existence in POST:

if (isset($_POST['button1']) && $_POST['button1'] == "Previous") {

  // do something

} else if (isset($_POST['button1']) && $_POST['button1'] == "Next") {

  // do something else

} else {

  // nothing has been submitted, display default

}

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In my case I would do that similar to Andrew Heath, but I woulg give the buttons a unique name. So the && clause is not needed

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Well, depending on the content of the form, having 2 submit buttons would be the only way to achieve what you want. (How would you have 2 forms if there were text boxes.. replicating the entered data with javascript would be rather annoying)

I would stick with just checking to see which button was pushed, it should be much easier.

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Of course, it always depends on the purpose. However, as a rule-of-thumb, I do the natural thing:

• If there are form fields that would be submitted by either submit button, use Javascript and detect the submit button pressed with a handler.
• In all other cases, use different forms.

I try to avoid having merged forms (the first option) as:

1. An input name change affects both of the submit target pages, and requires changes on both of the <form action="blah"> pages.
2. Javascript is not always enabled on browsers