Add icon to submit button in twitter bootstrap 2

You can use a button tag instead of input

<button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">
  <i class="icon-user icon-white"></i> Sign in
</button>

I think you can use label tags for this purpose. Here is a sample of the twitter bootstrap HTML navbar:

<form class="navbar-search">
    <input type="text" class="search-query" placeholder="Search here" />        
    <label for="mySubmit" class="btn"><i class="icon-search icon-white"></i> Search me</label>
    <input id="mySubmit" type="submit" value="Go" class="hidden" />
</form>

Basically you get a label element for the input (type=submit) and then you hide the actual input submit. Users can click on the label element and still get through with the form submission.

I think you should try this FontAwesome designed to be use with Twitter Bootstrap.

<button class="btn btn-primary icon-save">Button With Icon</button>

You can add an with the icon somewhere, and bind a JavaScrit action to it, that submits the form. If necessary, the name and value of the original submit button's name+value can be there in a hidden attribute. It's easy with jQuery, please allow me to avoid the pure JavaScript version.

<form method="post" id="myFavoriteForm>
   ...other fields...
   <input class="btn btn-primary" type="submit" name="login" value="Let me in" />
</form>

<form method="post" id="myFavoriteForm">
   ...other fields...
   <a href="#" class="btn btn-primary" id="myFavoriteFormSubmitButton">
      <i class="icon-user icon-white"></i>&nbsp;Let me in
   </a>
</form>

$("#myFavoriteFormSubmitButton").bind('click', function(event) {
   $("#myFavoriteForm").submit();
});

There is a new way to do this with bootstrap 3:

<button type="button" class="btn btn-default btn-lg">
  <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-star"></span> Star
</button>

It's on the bootstrap glyphicons page under "how to use":

I wanted to the Twitter Bootstrap icons to a basic Rails form and came across this post. After searching around a bit, I figured out an easy way to do it. Not sure if you're using Rails, but here's the code. The key was to pass a block to the link_to view helper:

<tbody>
    <% @products.each do |product| %>
      <tr>
        <td><%= product.id %></td>
        <td><%= link_to product.name, product_path(product) %></td>
        <td><%= product.created_at %></td>
        <td>
          <%= link_to(edit_product_path(product), :class => 'btn btn-mini') do %>
          Edit <i class="icon-pencil"></i>
          <% end %>

          <%= link_to(product_path(product), :method => :delete, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :class => 'btn btn-mini btn-danger') do %>
          Delete <i class="icon-trash icon-white"></i>
          <% end %>
        </td>
      </tr>
    <% end %>
  </tbody>
</table>

<%= link_to(new_product_path, :class => 'btn btn-primary') do %>
    New <i class="icon-plus icon-white"></i>
<% end %>

In case you're not using Rails, here is the output HTML for the links with icons (for an edit, delete, and new submit buttons)

# Edit
<a href="/products/1/edit" class="btn btn-mini">Edit <i class="icon-pencil"></i></a>

# Delete
<a href="/products/1" class="btn btn-mini btn-danger" data-confirm="Are you sure?" data-method="delete" rel="nofollow"> Delete <i class="icon-trash icon-white"></i></a>

# New
<a href="/products/new" class="btn btn-primary">New <i class="icon-plus icon-white"></i></a>

And here's a link to screenshot of the finished result: http://grab.by/cVXm

There is one way, how to get (bootstrap's) glyphicons into input type="submit". Using css3 multiple background.

HTML:

<form class="form-search">
   …
   <input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

and CSS:

.form-search input[type="submit"] {
    padding-left:16px; /* space for only one glyphicon */
    background:-moz-linear-gradient(top,#fff 0%,#eee 100%) no-repeat 16px top,
        url(../images/glyphicons-halflings.png) no-repeat -48px 0,
        -moz-linear-gradient(top,#fff 0%,#eee 100%); /* FF hack */
    /* another hacks here  */
    background:linear-gradient(to bottom,#fff 0%,#eee 100%) no-repeat 16px top,
        url(../images/glyphicons-halflings.png) no-repeat -48px 0,
        linear-gradient(to bottom,#fff 0%,#eee 100%); /* Standard way */
}

If multiple backgrounds are overlaping, at the top will be first background at the background: notation. So at the top is background which is indented 16px from left side (16px is width of single glyphicon), at the bottom level is whole glyphicons-halflings.png and at the bottom level (covers whole element) is same background gradient as at the top level.

-48px 0px is the cut for search icon (icon-search) but it's easy to show any other icon.

If someone need a :hover effect, background must be again typed at the same form.

I got this to work, but there's a few caveats I haven't resolved yet.

Anyway, this is how it's done:

Take your average input button:

<input type="submit" class="btn btn-success" value="Save">

Cut out the icon you want for your submit buttons from the glyphicons sprite file, make sure it's a 14x14 px image. Yes, in ideal circumstances you could reuse the sprite, and if anyone figures that out I'll be happy to hear how it's done. :-)

Once you did that, you can write css for your input button like this:

input[type='submit'] {
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'), #62C462; /* fallback color if gradients are not supported */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'), -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #62C462, #51A351);
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),    -moz-linear-gradient(top, #62C462, #51A351); /* For Fx 3.6 to Fx 15 */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),     -ms-linear-gradient(top, #62C462, #51A351); /* For IE 10 Platform Previews and Consumer Preview */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),      -o-linear-gradient(top, #62C462, #51A351); /* For Opera 11.1 to 12.0 */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),         linear-gradient(top, #62C462, #51A351); /* Standard syntax; must be the last statement */
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 5px 50%, 0cm 0cm;
    padding-left: 25px;
    text-shadow: 0 -1px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
}

input[type='submit']:hover {
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'), #51A351; /* fallback color if gradients are not supported */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'), -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #51A351, #51A351);
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),    -moz-linear-gradient(top, #51A351, #51A351); /* For Fx 3.6 to Fx 15 */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),     -ms-linear-gradient(top, #51A351, #51A351); /* For IE 10 Platform Previews and Consumer Preview */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),      -o-linear-gradient(top, #51A351, #51A351); /* For Opera 11.1 to 12.0 */
    background-image: url('../images/submit-icon.png'),         linear-gradient(top, #51A351, #51A351); /* Standard syntax; must be the last statement */
    background-position: 5px 50%, 0cm 0cm;
    padding-left: 25px;
}

Works in Firefox 14, Chrome 21

Doesn't work in IE 9

tl;dr: With a bit of css you can automagically put icons on your submit buttons, but you need to put the icon in a separate file and it won't work in Internet Explorer.

I think its a solution for your problem

<input type="text" placeholder="search here" />
<button type="submit"><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-search"></button>

Use input-append with add-on classes

<div class="input-append">
  <input class="span2" id="appendedPrependedInput" type="text">
  <span class="add-on">.00</span>
</div>

i guess this better way, works fine for me.

<form name="myform">
<!-- form fields -->
   <a href="#" class="btn btn-success" onclick="document.myform.submit();">
     Submit <i class="icon-plus"></i>&nbsp; Icon
   </a>
</form>