should button tags always be inside a form tag?

[Violet_82]

Hi guys, I was wondering whether it is alwasy true that a button needs to be inside a form tag? Is that necessary all the time?

The W3C say that The FORM element acts as a container for controls

so kind of yes really, but I 'd like to see if anybody has a different opinion. The thing is, I am working on a simple page at th moment which has 3 buttons, each of them doing a different thing: the first button validates something online; the second validates something offlice; the third cancels the action. So ideally each of them should be inside a separate form tag don't you think? To save me the hassle of having 3 form tags I was thinking not to have it at all, so just buttons inside a container, no form tag involved, but I am not sure that is a good idea

[pritaeas]

If you remove the form tag you'll just have to trigger your actions with Javascript. Depending on what you need to do this may be just fine.

[Violet_82]

pritaeas, I think I might have made a mistake in the way I have formulated the question. It didn't occur to me (yes I must have forgotten!) that buttons tag can have a type="button" which in a way it solves the problem. So really my question should have been: can I have more than 1 submit button inside a form tag? From what I can see, yes I can as long as they have a different name attribute. SOrry for the confusion.

[pritaeas]

Yes, you can. They will all share the same form action of course. If they need to be different, you'll have to use some Javascript.

[Violet_82]

ok I see, how about more than one submit button with a different name attribute? would that be enough to somehow "differentiate" them?

[|-|x]

Server side, yes. Only the submit button that was clicked will be set in the POST data.

[Meir David]

Hi,your question might confusable can you explain it clearly so that it will be easy for me to give you solution....