This recipe does not require any Apex controllers, so we can start with the custom component.

Opening the following URL in your browser displays the ContactEditActions page: https://<instance>/apex/ContactEditActions?id=<contact_id>.

Here, <instance> is the Salesforce instance specific to your organization, for example, na6.salesforce.com, and <contact_id> is the ID of any contact in your Salesforce instance.

The Visualforce page simply includes the custom component, and passes the Save and Cancel methods from the standard controller as attributes.

<apex:page standardController="Contact">
  <apex:pageMessages />
  <apex:form >
    <c:ContactEdit contact="{!contact}" saveAction="{!save}"
    cancelAction="{!cancel}" />
  </apex:form>
</apex:page>

The ContactEdit custom component declares attributes for the action methods of type ApexPages.Action.

<apex:attribute name="SaveAction" 
    description="The save action method from the page controller"
    type="ApexPages.Action" required="true"/>
<apex:attribute name="CancelAction" 
  description="The cancel action method from the page controller" 
  type="ApexPages.Action" required="true"/>

These attributes can then be bound to the command buttons in the component in the same way as if they were supplied by the component's controller.

<apex:commandButton value="Save" action="{!SaveAction}" />
<apex:commandButton value="Cancel" action="{!CancelAction}" 
    immediate="true" />

While this example has used action methods from a standard controller, any action method can be passed to a component using this mechanism, including methods from a custom controller or controller extension.