Multiple submit buttons in an HTML form

Question

Let's say you create a wizard in an HTML form. One button goes back, and one goes forward. Since the back button appears first in the markup when you press Enter, it will use that button to submit the form.

Example:

<form>
  <!-- Put your cursor in this field and press Enter -->
  <input type="text" name="field1" />

  <!-- This is the button that will submit -->
  <input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous Page" />

  <!-- But this is the button that I WANT to submit -->
  <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" />
</form>

I would like to get to decide which button is used to submit the form when a user presses Enter. That way, when you press Enter the wizard will move to the next page, not the previous. Do you have to use tabindex to do this?

Morvin

Just use for float: left – Kultur

Answer 1

I'm just doing the trick of floating the buttons to the right.

This way the Prev button is left of the Next button, but the Next comes first in the HTML structure:

.f {
  float: right;
}
.clr {
  clear: both;
}

<form action="action" method="get">
  <input type="text" name="abc">
  <div id="buttons">
    <input type="submit" class="f" name="next" value="Next">
    <input type="submit" class="f" name="prev" value="Prev">
    <div class="clr"></div><!-- This div prevents later elements from floating with the buttons. Keeps them 'inside' div#buttons -->
  </div>
</form>

Benefits over other suggestions: no JavaScript code, accessible, and both buttons remain type="submit".

Silvio

Please don't do this without also changing the tab order, so that hitting the tab button will cycle through the buttons as they appear on screen. – Pushed

Sadly this only works if the buttons are relatively close to each other. In more complicated situations, like a bigger page with several buttons spread over each corner but all in one single form this is simply unmanageable. – Barncard

I wish this other answer by netiul was the accepted answer. It provides a more general HTML only solution. https://mcmap.net/q/100214/-multiple-submit-buttons-in-an-html-form – Southwards

Answer 2

Change the previous button type into a button like this:

<input type="button" name="prev" value="Previous Page" />

Now the Next button would be the default, plus you could also add the default attribute to it so that your browser will highlight it like so:

<input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" default />

Monochromat

What default attribute are you talking about? There is no "default" attribute, which would be valid: w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/… (not in HTML5, HTML 4.01 Transitional/Strict, XHTML 1.0 Strict). And I don't see why changing the input type from submit to button would be better. You can have multiple submit type input elements in one form without a problem. I don't really understand why this answer is so upvoted. – Jetblack

Having an input of type "button" doesn't execute the form action. You can have an onclick or something, thus executing another function than the "default" form action (which is executed by pressing the "submit"-type button). That's what I was looking for and that's why I upvoted it. Can't speak for the "default" attribute, wasn't part of my problem;) thanks for your clarification, though. – Ferrule

@Sk8erPeter, @Ferrule .... hmm.. I suspect this default attribute is a Global attribute; enumerated attribute.. which is related to enumeration states: w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/… . apart from that point.. the button aspect of the this answer is not an answer.. it's a 'conditional suggestion' or a query (question itself). – Interpretative

nevermind.. I just realized he was actually providing a workaround in this answer.. turning the first input into a button so that the second input raises it's click event when the enter key is pressed... though.. still conditional – Interpretative

@Jonas: yes, type="button" doesn't submit the form, type="submit" does, but changing the type of these buttons is definitely not a solution, because these buttons should basically behave the same way - the OP's question was how to make the "Next" button the default for pressing the Enter key. And there's a possible solution in the accepted answer. – Jetblack

@BrettCaswell: changing the type of these buttons is a bad workaround (see my previous comment). There is no valid default attribute for input tags (as I stated earlier) in HTML, and the (popular) browsers will NOT highlight the button which has this attribute, which means there is no nonstandard implementation of this attribute - so I still don't know what @Wally Lawless was talking about, and why this answer is so overrated. There is only one valid default attribute introduced in HTML5, BUT only for the <track> tag: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/track – Jetblack

Answer 3

Give your submit buttons the same name like this:

<input type="submit" name="submitButton" value="Previous Page" />
<input type="submit" name="submitButton" value="Next Page" />

When the user presses Enter and the request goes to the server, you can check the value for submitButton on your server-side code which contains a collection of form name/value pairs. For example, in ASP Classic:

If Request.Form("submitButton") = "Previous Page" Then
    ' Code for the previous page
ElseIf Request.Form("submitButton") = "Next Page" Then
    ' Code for the next page
End If

Reference: Using multiple submit buttons on a single form

Dearth

This is not what the user asked. The user wanted to know how to control which submit button in a form is activated when enter is pressed ie. which is the default button. – Shayna

doesn't work in an I18n application where you even dont know the label of the button. – Rora

In what system or technology solution would the server itself not know what the label that was used for the next and back button? Did not the server generate the next and back button in the first place? (If the localisation is handled on the client side, I imagine the server may not know, but I have never heard of this for HTML) – Middleoftheroader

This answer completely misses the question, likely it is for a different question. Why so many upvotes??? Not to mention that one should never check for the label of the button... calls for a lot of trouble. Even the simple case: "we should abbreviate the string to 'Prev. Page' " will ruin your sites functionality. – Barncard

Answer 4

If the fact that the first button is used by default is consistent across browsers, put them the right way around in the source code, and then use CSS to switch their apparent positions.

float them left and right to switch them around visually, for example.

Fiend

Answer 5

Sometimes the provided solution by palotasb is not sufficient. There are use cases where for example a "Filter" submits button is placed above buttons like "Next and Previous". I found a workaround for this: copy the submit button which needs to act as the default submit button in a hidden div and place it inside the form above any other submit button.

Technically it will be submitted by a different button when pressing Enter than when clicking on the visible Next button. But since the name and value are the same, there's no difference in the result.

<html>
<head>
    <style>
        div.defaultsubmitbutton {
            display: none;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <form action="action" method="get">
        <div class="defaultsubmitbutton">
            <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next">
        </div>
        <p><input type="text" name="filter"><input type="submit" value="Filter"></p>
        <p>Filtered results</p>
        <input type="radio" name="choice" value="1">Filtered result 1
        <input type="radio" name="choice" value="2">Filtered result 2
        <input type="radio" name="choice" value="3">Filtered result 3
        <div>
            <input type="submit" name="prev" value="Prev">
            <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next">
        </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Dusk

Answer 6

This cannot be done with pure HTML. You must rely on JavaScript for this trick.

However, if you place two forms on the HTML page you can do this.

Form1 would have the previous button.

Form2 would have any user inputs + the next button.

When the user presses Enter in Form2, the Next submit button would fire.

Calaverite

Answer 7

I would use JavaScript to submit the form. The function would be triggered by the OnKeyPress event of the form element and would detect whether the Enter key was selected. If this is the case, it will submit the form.

Here are two pages that give techniques on how to do this: 1, 2. Based on these, here is an example of usage (based on here):

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">//<!--
function submitenter(myfield,e) {
  var keycode;
  if (window.event) {
    keycode = window.event.keyCode;
  } else if (e) {
    keycode = e.which;
  } else {
    return true;
  }

  if (keycode == 13) {
    myfield.form.submit();
    return false;
  } else {
    return true;
  }
}
//--></SCRIPT>

<INPUT NAME="MyText" TYPE="Text" onKeyPress="return submitenter(this,event)" />

Winchester

What happens if javascript is disabled? – Nitz

You shouldn't use <!-- and --> to comment out JS, these tags are not Javascript language tokens – Gower

@Gower They're not to comment out JS. They are ignored when parsing the contents of <script> in a browser supporting <script>. Today they really aren't required. But in very ancient browsers, this was a compatibility hack to avoid the script to be printed as plain text. – Kuwait

Answer 8

If you really just want it to work like an install dialog, just give focus to the "Next" button OnLoad.

That way if the user hits Return, the form submits and goes forward. If they want to go back they can hit Tab or click on the button.

Glottic

They mean someone fills out a form and hits return while in a text field. – Attenuator

Answer 9

You can do it with CSS.

Put the buttons in the markup with the Next button first, then the Prev button afterwards.

Then use CSS to position them to appear the way you want.

Prissy

Like palotasb's answer? – Kalgoorlie

Answer 10

This works without JavaScript or CSS in most browsers:

<form>
    <p><input type="text" name="field1" /></p>
    <p><a href="previous.html">
    <button type="button">Previous Page</button></a>
    <button type="submit">Next Page</button></p>
</form>

Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome all work.
As always, Internet Explorer is the problem.

This version works when JavaScript is turned on:

<form>
    <p><input type="text" name="field1" /></p>
    <p><a href="previous.html">
    <button type="button" onclick="window.location='previous.html'">Previous Page</button></a>
    <button type="submit">Next Page</button></p>
</form>

So the flaw in this solution is:

Previous Page does not work if you use Internet Explorer with JavaScript off.

Mind you, the back button still works!

Cotterell

Without javascript you won't be able to activate the "previous page" button, because the type="button" ! – Mockery

The problem with your suggestion is that a button type="button" would not post the form, so it basically does nothing, while the second version with an anchor would create a GET instead of a POST. – Barncard

Answer 11

If you have multiple active buttons on one page then you can do something like this:

Mark the first button you want to trigger on the Enter keypress as the default button on the form. For the second button, associate it to the Backspace button on the keyboard. The Backspace eventcode is 8.

$(document).on("keydown", function(event) {
  if (event.which.toString() == "8") {
    var findActiveElementsClosestForm = $(document.activeElement).closest("form");

    if (findActiveElementsClosestForm && findActiveElementsClosestForm.length) {
      $("form#" + findActiveElementsClosestForm[0].id + " .secondary_button").trigger("click");
    }
  }
});

<script src="https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-3.2.1.min.js"></script>

<form action="action" method="get" defaultbutton="TriggerOnEnter">
  <input type="submit" id="PreviousButton" name="prev" value="Prev" class="secondary_button" />
  <input type="submit" id='TriggerOnEnter' name="next" value="Next" class="primary_button" />
</form>

Aldine

Answer 12

Changing the tab order should be all it takes to accomplish this. Keep it simple.

Another simple option would be to put the back button after the submit button in the HTML code but float it to the left so it appears on the page before the submit button.

Wellman

The tab order is ignored when deciding which button to be the default one. According to HTML spec: A form element's default button is the first submit button in tree order whose form owner is that form element. – Barncard

Answer 13

Another simple option would be to put the back button after the submit button in the HTML code, but float it to the left, so it appears on the page before the submit button.

Changing the tab order should be all it takes to accomplish this. Keep it simple.

Linson

Answer 14

The first time I came up against this, I came up with an onclick()/JavaScript hack when choices are not prev/next that I still like for its simplicity. It goes like this:

@model myApp.Models.myModel

<script type="text/javascript">
    function doOperation(op) {
        document.getElementById("OperationId").innerText = op;
        // you could also use Ajax to reference the element.
    }
</script>

<form>
  <input type="text" id = "TextFieldId" name="TextField" value="" />
  <input type="hidden" id="OperationId" name="Operation" value="" />
  <input type="submit" name="write" value="Write" onclick='doOperation("Write")'/>
  <input type="submit" name="read" value="Read" onclick='doOperation("Read")'/>
</form>

When either submit button is clicked, it stores the desired operation in a hidden field (which is a string field included in the model the form is associated with) and submits the form to the Controller, which does all the deciding. In the Controller, you simply write:

// Do operation according to which submit button was clicked
// based on the contents of the hidden Operation field.
if (myModel.Operation == "Read")
{
     // Do read logic
}
else if (myModel.Operation == "Write")
{
     // Do write logic
}
else
{
     // Do error logic
}

You can also tighten this up slightly using numeric operation codes to avoid the string parsing, but unless you play with enumerations, the code is less readable, modifiable, and self-documenting and the parsing is trivial, anyway.

Pylos

If you read the question carefully, there is no mention about 'clicking' a submit button, it is all about pressing Enter in a textfield and defining which button gets activated. The code you provide is for a different problem, which already has several good solutions, albeit yours is a nice one as well. Do you have a solution for the original question? – Barncard

Answer 15

From https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#implicit-submission

A form element's default button is the first submit button in tree order whose form owner is that form element.

If the user agent supports letting the user submit a form implicitly (for example, on some platforms hitting the "enter" key while a text field is focused implicitly submits the form)...

Having the next input be type="submit" and changing the previous input to type="button" should give the desired default behavior.

<form>
   <input type="text" name="field1" /> <!-- put your cursor in this field and press Enter -->

   <input type="button" name="prev" value="Previous Page" /> <!-- This is the button that will submit -->
   <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" /> <!-- But this is the button that I WANT to submit -->
</form>

Keats

Answer 16

This is what I have tried out:

1. You need to make sure you give your buttons different names
2. Write an if statement that will do the required action if either button is clicked.

 

<form>
    <input type="text" name="field1" /> <!-- Put your cursor in this field and press Enter -->

    <input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous Page" /> <!-- This is the button that will submit -->
    <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" /> <!-- But this is the button that I WANT to submit -->
</form>

In PHP,

if(isset($_POST['prev']))
{
    header("Location: previous.html");
    die();
}

if(isset($_POST['next']))
{
    header("Location: next.html");
    die();
}

Eichmann

The problem is that hitting enter on a text field will submit the form with the first submit button, not with the intended one (second one in the example). Finding out which submit button was used to submit the form is easy, and that was not the question! – Mockery

Answer 17

<input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous Page"> 
<input type="submit" name="prev" value="Next Page"> 

Keep the name of all submit buttons the same: "prev".

The only difference is the value attribute with unique values. When we create the script, these unique values will help us to figure out which of the submit buttons was pressed.

And write the following coding:

    btnID = ""
if Request.Form("prev") = "Previous Page" then
    btnID = "1"
else if Request.Form("prev") = "Next Page" then
    btnID = "2"
end if

Wegner

The problem is that hitting enter on a text field will submit the form with the first submit button, not with the intended one (second one in the example). Finding out which submit button was used to submit the form is easy, and that was not the question! – Mockery

Answer 18

I came across this question when trying to find an answer to basically the same thing, only with ASP.NET controls, when I figured out that the ASP button has a property called UseSubmitBehavior that allows you to set which one does the submitting.

<asp:Button runat="server" ID="SumbitButton" UseSubmitBehavior="False" Text="Submit" />

Just in case someone is looking for the ASP.NET button way to do it.

Asthma

Answer 19

With JavaScript (here jQuery), you can disable the prev button before submitting the form.

$('form').on('keypress', function(event) {
    if (event.which == 13) {
        $('input[name="prev"]').prop('type', 'button');
    }
});

Lengel

Answer 20

I solved a very similar problem in this way:

1. If JavaScript is enabled (in most cases nowadays) then all the submit buttons are "degraded" to buttons at page load via JavaScript (jQuery). Click events on the "degraded" button typed buttons are also handled via JavaScript.

2. If JavaScript is not enabled then the form is served to the browser with multiple submit buttons. In this case hitting Enter on a textfield within the form will submit the form with the first button instead of the intended default, but at least the form is still usable: you can submit with both the prev and next buttons.

Working example:

<html>
    <head>
        <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.12.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
    </head>

    <body>
        <form action="http://httpbin.org/post" method="post">
            If JavaScript  is disabled, then you CAN submit the form
            with button1, button2 or button3.

            If you press enter on a text field, then the form is
            submitted with the first submit button.

            If JavaScript is enabled, then the submit typed buttons
            without the 'defaultSubmitButton' style are converted
            to button typed buttons.

            If you press Enter on a text field, then the form is
            submitted with the only submit button
            (the one with class defaultSubmitButton)

            If you click on any other button in the form, then the
            form is submitted with that button's value.

            <br />

            <input type="text" name="text1" ></input>
            <button type="submit" name="action" value="button1" >button 1</button>
            <br />

            <input type="text" name="text2" ></input>
            <button type="submit" name="action" value="button2" >button 2</button>
            <br />

            <input type="text" name="text3" ></input>
            <button class="defaultSubmitButton" type="submit" name="action" value="button3" >default button</button>
        </form>

        <script>
            $(document).ready(function(){

                /* Change submit typed buttons without the 'defaultSubmitButton'
                   style to button typed buttons */
                $('form button[type=submit]').not('.defaultSubmitButton').each(function(){
                    $(this).attr('type', 'button');
                });

                /* Clicking on button typed buttons results in:
                   1. Setting the form's submit button's value to
                      the clicked button's value,
                   2. Clicking on the form's submit button */
                $('form button[type=button]').click(function( event ){
                    var form = event.target.closest('form');
                    var submit = $("button[type='submit']",form).first();
                    submit.val(event.target.value);
                    submit.click();
                });
            });
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

Mockery

Answer 21

You can use Tabindex to solve this issue. Also changing the order of the buttons would be a more efficient way to achieve this.

Change the order of the buttons and add float values to assign them the desired position you want to show in your HTML view.

Zima

Answer 22

A maybe somewhat more modern approach over the CSS float method could be a solution using flexbox with the order property on the flex items. It could be something along those lines:

<div style="display: flex">
  <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" style="order: 1" />
  <input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous Page" style="order: 0" />
</div>

Of course it depends on your document structure whether this is a feasible approach or not, but I find flex items much easier to control than floating elements.

Mario

Answer 23

Instead of struggling with multiple submits, JavaScript or anything like that to do some previous/next stuff, an alternative would be to use a carousel to simulate the different pages. Doing this :

• You don't need multiple buttons, inputs or submits to do the previous/next thing, you have only one input type="submit" in only one form.
• The values in the whole form are there until the form is submitted.
• The user can go to any previous page and any next page flawlessly to modify the values.

Example using Bootstrap 5.0.0 :

<div id="carousel" class="carousel slide" data-ride="carousel">
    <form action="index.php" method="post" class="carousel-inner">
        <div class="carousel-item active">
            <input type="text" name="lastname" placeholder="Lastname"/>
        </div>
        <div class="carousel-item">
            <input type="text" name="firstname" placeholder="Firstname"/>
        </div>
        <div class="carousel-item">
            <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit"/>
        </div>
    </form>
    <a class="btn-secondary" href="#carousel" role="button" data-slide="prev">Previous page</a>
    <a class="btn-primary" href="#carousel" role="button" data-slide="next">Next page</a>
</div>

Baluster

Answer 24

I think this is an easy solution for this. Change the Previous button type to button, and add a new onclick attribute to the button with value jQuery(this).attr('type','submit');.

So, when the user clicks on the Previous button then its type will be changed to submit and the form will be submitted with the Previous button.

<form>
  <!-- Put your cursor in this field and press Enter -->
  <input type="text" name="field1" />

  <!-- This is the button that will submit -->
  <input type="button" onclick="jQuery(this).attr('type','submit');" name="prev" value="Previous Page" />

  <!-- But this is the button that I WANT to submit -->
  <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" />
</form>

Pilate

Answer 25

Problem

A form may have several submit buttons. When pressing return in any input, the first submit button is used by the browser. However, sometimes we want to use a different/later button as default.

Options

1. Add a hidden submit button with the same action first (☹️ duplication)
2. Put the desired submit button first in the form and then move it to the correct place via CSS (☹️ may not be feasible, may result in cumbersome styling)
3. Change the handling of the return key in all form inputs via JavaScript (☹️ needs javascript)

None of the options is ideal, so we choose 3. because most browsers have JavaScript enabled.

Chosen solution

// example implementation
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (ev) => {
  for (const defaultSubmitInput of document.querySelectorAll('[data-default-submit]')) {
    for (const formInput of defaultSubmitInput.form.querySelectorAll('input')) {
      if (formInput.dataset.ignoreDefaultSubmit != undefined) { continue; }
      formInput.addEventListener('keypress', (ev) => {
        if (ev.keyCode == 13) {
          ev.preventDefault();
          defaultSubmitInput.click();
        }
      })
    }
  }
});

  <!-- example markup -->
  <form action="https://postman-echo.com/get" method="get">
    <input type="text" name="field1">
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="other action">
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="default action" data-default-submit> <!-- this button will be used on return -->
  </form>

It may be useful to be able to remove the enhancement from some inputs. This can be achieved by:

<input type="text" name="field2" data-ignore-default-submit> <!-- uses browser standard behaviour -->

Here a complete code pen.

Sollie

Answer 26

Don't fight the HTML behaviour. You can alter the order aftercase with css (flex-direction).

Recent solution : flex-direction

A more recent solution will be to use flex-direction.

Horizontal reverse

.row-reverse { display: flex; flex-direction: row-reverse; }

Vertical reverse

.column-reverse { display: flex; flex-direction: column-reverse; }

READ MORE:

• Reverse Element Order with CSS Flexbox

CODE SOLUTION:

form.flex { display: flex; gap:5px; }
.row-reverse { display: flex; gap:5px; flex-direction: row-reverse; }

<form class="flex">
  <!-- Put your cursor in this field and press Enter -->
  <input type="text" name="field1" />

  <div class="row-reverse">
  <!-- But this is the button that I WANT to submit -->
  <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" />

  <!-- This is the button that will submit -->
  <input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous Page" />
  </div>
</form>

Symbolize

Answer 27

When a button is clicked with a mouse (and hopefully by touch), it records the X,Y coordinates. This is not the case when it is invoked by a form, and these values are normally zero.

So you can do something like this:

function(e) {
  const isArtificial = e.screenX === 0 && e.screenY === 0
    && e.x === 0 && e.y === 0
    && e.clientX === 0 && e.clientY === 0;

    if (isArtificial) {
      return; // DO NOTHING
    } else {
      // OPTIONAL: Don't submit the form when clicked
      // e.preventDefault();
      // e.stopPropagation();
    }

    // ...Natural code goes here
}

Festination

You seem to have confused multiple button inputs with a single image input. – Cultivated

Not really, e is expected to be a MouseEvent. Have a look at the properties (developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MouseEvent). – Festination

If the button was clicked with a Mouse, isArtificial will be false. Because, properties like clientX or clientY will not be zero, but the mouse coordinates. – Festination

What is "natural code"? – Kalgoorlie

Yes, in retrospect I could have worded this answer more clearly. Natural code in this case refers to code that is meant for instances where the form did not automatically invoke the event handler. Instances where the user actively clicked (or tapped) the submit button. – Festination

Answer 28

Using the example you gave:

<form>
    <input type="text" name="field1" /><!-- Put your cursor in this field and press Enter -->
    <input type="submit" name="prev" value="Previous Page" /> <!-- This is the button that will submit -->
    <input type="submit" name="next" value="Next Page" /> <!-- But this is the button that I WANT to submit -->
</form>

If you click on "Previous Page", only the value of "prev" will be submitted. If you click on "Next Page" only the value of "next" will be submitted.

If however, you press Enter somewhere on the form, neither "prev" nor "next" will be submitted.

So using pseudocode you could do the following:

If "prev" submitted then
    Previous Page was click
Else If "next" submitted then
    Next Page was click
Else
    No button was click

Madelle

There's never a situation (without using js) when none of the buttons is triggered. If you hit ENTER the first button in the code will catch the event. In the html-example it is the prev-button. – Selfregulating