seanpdoyle commented on Dec 4, 2020 •

Consistently render button_to as <button>

Prior to this commit, the
ActionView::Helpers::UrlHelper#button_to helper rendered
<input type="submit"> elements when passed its contents as a String
argument, and rendered <button type="submit"> elements when passed its
contents as a block.

This difference is subtle, and might lead to surprises.

Additionally, a <form> element's submitter can encode a name/value
pairing, which will be submitted as part of the request. When
button_to renders an <input type="submit"> element, the "button"
content is rendered as a [value] attribute, which prevents any
meaningful data from being encoded.

Since it's a single <button> or <input type="submit"> within a
<form>, missing out on that opportunity to encode information might
not be a show stopper, but ensuring that a <button> element is
rendered without a default [value] attribute enables applications to
encode additional information that can be accessed JavaScript as
element.value, instead of a workaround like
element.getAttribute("data-value").

Support rendering input elements with button_to

To support the original behavior of button_to rendering <input type="submit"> elements when invoked without a block, expose the
app.config.button_to_generates_button_tag configuration flag.

By default, it's set to true and ensures that all button_to calls
render <button> elements. To revert to the original behavior, set it
to false.

Co-authored-by: Dusan Orlovic [email protected]