在ASP.NET MVC中处理2种不同形式之间的共享数据时，最佳实践是什么？

Question

Suppose you have an mvc razor webpage in which the user can approve or reject a request of some sorts but he would also have to include a reason.

Now, you could have 2 input fields: the first is to specify a reason for approving the request; the second is to specify a reason for rejecting the request. In this case all will be fine and dandy.

What if you, as a UI designer, thought that just one field for specifying the reason would be enough? In this case you would have two submit buttons or inputs (one for approving and one for rejecting) and in order to post to the appropriate controller you would have to have 2 forms for each of those submit buttons but you cannot share the 'reason' input field between the 2 forms.

So what would be the best practice for such a scenario?

PS: I know there are solutions to this: using ajax or other javascript to perform the post, defining and using attributes to pair controllers with their respective buttons, using the formaction html 5 attribute and perhaps other solutions I missed but they either seem gimmicky or have certain downsides.

Answer 1

Why do you need two forms? You can simply do something like the following:

<form action="" method="post">
    <textarea name="reason"></textarea>
    <button type="submit" name="approve" value="true">Approve</button>
    <button type="submit" name="approve" value="false">Reject</button>
</form>

The buttons then operate similarly to a radio. Whichever one the user clicks, that is the value that will be posted. Then, you can simply branch on that boolean and either approve or reject accordingly.