Angularjs clicking a button within a form causes page refresh

I have a form in Angular that has two buttons tags in it. One button submits the form on ng-click. The other button is purely for navigation using ng-click. However, when this second button is clicked Angularjs is causing a page refresh which triggers a 404. I've dropped a breakpoint in the function and it is triggering my function. If I do any of the following it stops:

  1. If I remove the ng-click the button doesn't cause a page refresh.
  2. If I comment out the code in the function it doesn't cause a page refresh.
  3. If I change the button tag to an anchor tag (a) with href="" then it doesn't cause a refresh.

The later being the simplest workaround, but why is Angular even running any code after my function that causes the page to reload? Seems like a bug.

Here is the form:

<form class="form-horizontal" name="myProfile" ng-switch-when="profile">
   <fieldset>

      <div class="control-group">
         <label class="control-label" for="passwordButton">Password</label>
         <div class="controls">
            <button id="passwordButton" class="secondaryButton" ng-click="showChangePassword()">Change</button>
         </div>
      </div>

      <div class="buttonBar">
           <button id="saveProfileButton" class="primaryButton" ng-click="saveUser()">Save</button>
      </div>
   </fieldset>
</form>

Here is the controller method:

 $scope.showChangePassword = function() {
    $scope.selectedLink = "changePassword";
 };

If you have a look at the W3C specification, it would seem like the obvious thing to try is to mark your button elements with type='button' when you don't want them to submit.

The thing to note in particular is where it says

A button element with no type attribute specified represents the same thing as a button element with its type attribute set to "submit"

You can try to prevent default handler:

html:

<button ng-click="saveUser($event)">

js:

$scope.saveUser = function (event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  // your code
}

You should declare the attribute ng-submit={expression} in your <form> tag.

From the ngSubmit docs http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.directive:ngSubmit

Enables binding angular expressions to onsubmit events.

Additionally it prevents the default action (which for form means sending the request to the server and reloading the current page).

I use directive to prevent default behaviour:

module.directive('preventDefault', function() {
    return function(scope, element, attrs) {
        angular.element(element).bind('click', function(event) {
            event.preventDefault();
            event.stopPropagation();
        });
    }
});

And then, in html:

<button class="secondaryButton" prevent-default>Secondary action</button>

This directive can also be used with <a> and all other tags

First Button submits the form and second does not

<body>
<form  ng-app="myApp" ng-controller="myCtrl" ng-submit="Sub()">
<div>
S:<input type="text" ng-model="v"><br>
<br>
<button>Submit</button>
//Dont Submit
<button type='button' ng-click="Dont()">Dont Submit</button>
</div>
</form>

<script>
var app = angular.module('myApp', []);
app.controller('myCtrl', function($scope) {
$scope.Sub=function()
{
alert('Inside Submit');
}

$scope.Dont=function()
{
$scope.v=0;
}
});
</script>

</body>