Multiple Submit Buttons in MVC3 - FormCollection has no Key/Value for Input Type Submit - Remote Validation Issue?

I have the two buttons in MVC3 application.

   <input type="submit" name="command" value="Transactions" />  &nbsp;
   <input type="submit" name="command" value="All Transactions" />

When I click on a button, it posts back correctly but the FormCollection has no "command" keys. I also added a property "command" in the model and its value is null when the form is posted.

public ActionResult Index(FormCollection formCollection, SearchReportsModel searchReportsModel).         {
            if (searchReportsModel.command == "All Transactions")
              ...
            else
              ....
        }

I am using IE8. How can I use multiple buttons in MVC3? Is there a workaround for this issue? I did lot of research and could not find a solution.

Update:

Dave: I tried your solution and it is throwing Http 404 error "The resource cannot be found".

Here is my code:

[HttpPost]
[AcceptSubmitType(Name = "Command", Type = "Transactions")]
public ActionResult Index(SearchReportsModel searchReportsModel)开发者_C百科
{
    return RedirectToAction("Transactions", "Reports", new { ...});
}

[HttpPost]
[ActionName("Index")]
[AcceptSubmitType(Name = "Command", Type = "All Transactions")]
public ActionResult Index_All(SearchReportsModel searchReportsModel)
{
   return RedirectToAction("AllTransactions", "Reports", new { ... });
}

public class AcceptSubmitTypeAttribute : ActionMethodSelectorAttribute
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public string Type { get; set; }

        public override bool IsValidForRequest(ControllerContext controllerContext, MethodInfo methodInfo)
        {
            return controllerContext.RequestContext.HttpContext
                .Request.Form[this.Name] == this.Type;
        }
    }

The issue was resolved after commenting the following Remote validation attribute in the ViewModel (SearchReportsModel). It looks like it is a bug in MVC3:

  //[Remote("CheckStudentNumber", "SearchReports", ErrorMessage = "No records exist for this Student Number")]
  public int? StudentNumber { get; set; }

You might be able to get away with an ActionMethodSelectorAttribute attribute and override the IsValidForRequest method. You can see below this method just determines whether a particular parameter (Name) matches one of it's properties (Type). It should bind with a view model that looks like this:

public class TestViewModel
{
    public string command { get; set; }
    public string moreProperties { get; set; }
}

The attribute could look like this:

public class AcceptSubmitTypeAttribute : ActionMethodSelectorAttribute
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Type { get; set; }

    public override bool IsValidForRequest(ControllerContext controllerContext, MethodInfo methodInfo)
    {
        return controllerContext.RequestContext.HttpContext
            .Request.Form[this.Name] == this.Type;
    }
}

Then, you could tag your actions with the AcceptSubmitType attribute like this:

[AcceptSubmitType(Name="command", Type="Transactions")]
public ActionResult Index(TestViewModel vm) 
{
    // use view model to do whatever
}

// to pseudo-override the "Index" action
[ActionName("Index")]
[AcceptSubmitType(Name="command", Type="All Transactions")]
public ActionResult Index_All(TestViewModel vm) 
{
    // use view model to do whatever
}

This also eliminates the need for logic in a single controller action since it seems you genuinely need two separate courses of action.

Correct me If I'm wrong, but according to W3C standard you should have only 1 submit button per form. Also having two controls with identical names is a bad idea.

when you submit (on any button) your whole page is posted back to the controller action, I have had the same problem but have not found a decent solution yet.. maybe you could work with a javascript 'onclick' method and set a hidden value to 1 for the first button and 0 for the second button or something like that?

This is a nice Blog about this found here

I like the look of adding in AcceptParameterAttribute

@CodeRush: The W3C standard does allow more than 1 submit per form. http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html. "A form may contain more than one submit button".