Checking which submit button was clicked

Question

I am devoloping a web application using J2EE and Spring Roo as framework.

I want to create a form with two submit buttons:

• One for save and continue

• Another for save and finish

  <form action="mycontroller" method="post"> <input type="submit" value="Save and continue"/> <input type="submit" value="Save and finish"/> </form>

So I can choose to either store the data in the database and add more entries or to store the data and finish the process.

How can I check what submit button was clicked in the method of the controller that processes the action?

public class MyController {
    void actionMethod(...) {
        // check which submit was clicked
    }
}

Answer 1

You should add a name field to both buttons:

<input type="submit" name="button" value="Save and continue"/>
<input type="submit" name="button" value="Save and finish"/>

Once in the controller, you can recover the element by this name field and check its value field:

String field = request.getParameter("button");

if ("Save and continue".equals(button)){
    // Do stuff
}
else if ("Save and finish".equals(button)){
    // Do a different stuff
}
else {
    // None of them were pressed
}

Or also you can use a different name value for both buttons:

<input type="submit" name="button1" value="Save and continue"/>
<input type="submit" name="button2" value="Save and finish"/>

In your controller:

String button1 = request.getParameter("button1");
String button2 = request.getParameter("button2");

if (button1 != null){
    // Do stuff
}
else if (button2 != null){
    // Do a different stuff
}
else {
    // None of them were pressed
}

Second solution is preferred because it doesn't depend on the value of the elements