Multiple forms in MVC3

Question

I have a webpage with a form, which looks kinda like this:

@using (Html.BeginForm("MyAction", "Controller", FormMethod.Post))
{
    // html input fields here
    // ...
    // [SUBMIT]
}

When a user presses on the submit button, then the following function is called:

public ActionResult MyAction ( string id )
{
    // default action
}

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult MyAction ( MyModel model )
{
    // called when a form is submitted
}

Now my problem is, is that i have to add another form. But how can i tell which form was submitted? Because both will now end up in the second (HttpPost) method...

What would be a good way to separate both form actions? Please note that when a form is submitted, that i must stay on the same page. I can't redirect myself to another page/controller.

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly you will have a page with two forms in it. As a first approach I will post each form to a different action of the same controller.

The first

@using (Html.BeginForm("MyAction", "Controller", FormMethod.Post))

The second

@using (Html.BeginForm("MyAction2", "Controller", FormMethod.Post))

and then, a little refactoring on your two actions to follow the DRY principle.

If instead you need both form to post to the same action, then I will put a hidden input to let me know wich one was called.

Answer 2

If you have multiple forms on one page/view and would like to post to different actions add the name html attribute to the beginform method:

@using (Html.BeginForm("action1", "contollerName", new { @name = "form1" }))
{
    ...add view code
}

@using (Html.BeginForm("action2", "contollerName", new { @name = "form2" }))
{
    ...add view code
}

Having a different name for each form will allow MVC to easily determine which action to post to rather than relying on different form collection values to figure this out.