Rails: multiple submit button outside simple form

Question

Say I have an Article model, and in the Article model 'settings' view I have two submit buttons outside of a form, "update Details" and "Next Template".

My question is how can I know which button is clicked in the controller. Both submit button is outside of a simple form. I tried like:

 <%= f.submit "update Details",name: "update_details", class: "x-update" %>


<%= f.submit 'Next Template', name: "next_template", class: "x-next" %>

and the logic is the same on the controller

   if params[:update_details]
      [..]
   elsif params[:next_template]
      [..]
   end

but it doesn't work. How do I do that? I can't change the route, so is there a way to send a different variable that gets picked up by [:params]?

Answer 1

I resolved it by putting in our html form template:

<input type="hidden" name= "action_type" id="action_type">

then in JavaScript file we added

$('.x-update').on 'click', ->
$("#action_type").val("exit")
$("#details-form").submit()

and then in controller file we checked the parameters:

if params[:action_type] == "exit"
  redirect_to #your desired path
else
  redirect_to #based on given path

That's It. It works.