Can button_to generate <button> tag instead of <input type="submit" />?

Question

Rather than

<input type="submit" />

I want to output

<button>

using the button_to method (rails 3.0.0)

Is this possible?

Answer 1

As of the latest version of Rails (4.0.2, not sure about previous versions) passing a block to button_to invokes branch logic in the helper that creates a button element instead of an input.

For example, if you wanted to make a 'delete' button element in haml, bootstrap & fontawesome (my use case):

= button_to(foo_path(@foo),
  class: 'btn btn-sm', method: :delete, remote: true) do
  <i class="fa fa-times"></i>

If you want them to just always be button elements no matter what, you could always have your button content inside a block instead of the first argument. Not sure what the trade-off is there.