Model-View Controller

Design pattern presentation and discussion

Rajat arya (rajata@u)

EFECS * OIM
 Agenda
 Definition
 what is this fancy thing called MVC?
 History / Origins
 where does it come from?
 Functional Description
 how does MVC actually work?
 Goal / Benefits
 why is it important?
 Example Scenarios
 where could MVC be used?
 Sample MVC Implementation Review
 lets see this thing actually working
 Modern Implementations
 where does it exist right now?
 Questions?
 Reference Materials
 MVC Definition

The Model-View Controller Paradigm is a triad of

classes used to build modular applications.

MVC consists of three components (objects):

Model – application object (data)

View – user interface (presentation)
Controller – defines how user interface reacts
to user action
 History

First Appeared Formally in:

“A cookbook for using the model-view controller user

interface paradigm in Smalltalk-8”

by Glenn E. Krasner and Stephen T. Pope

Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, 1(3):26-49
August/September 1988
 Functional Description Intro – Observer Pattern
 MVC utilizes two  Decouples Subjects from
applications of the Observer Observers, subjects do not
Pattern know about observers
 Observer Pattern (aka directly
Publish-Subscribe)
 Attach / Detach / Notify
 MVC Functional Description
 MVC Definition: Specific
application of the Observer
Design Pattern View
 Model is application object
(data)
 View is the user interface
(presentation) – observes
Model
Controller
 Controller defines way
user interface reacts to input
– observes View
 Observer Pattern Used Twice
(Controller observes View
and View observes Model) Model
 MVC Functional Description (2)
Controller maintains
(1)
knowledge of both View View
and Model, View has
knowledge of Model
Controller observes
changes in View (1), (3)
informs Model (2) Controller

View observes changes in

Model (3) and updates (2)

Model
 Goal / Benefits

 Modularity
 decoupling components
 allows each component to be versioned independently
 worked on by individuals on team (UI person, DB person, etc)

 Flexibility
 multiple Views for one Model (web frontend, desktop frontend, mobile
frontend, etc)
 replace one component (replace data storage from flat file to database)

 Maintainability
 only change one component where bug exists, less risk in late changes

 Testability
 each component communicates through contract so each component can
be unit-tested independently
 Example Scenarios

Spreadsheet application (classic)

 same data (model) spreadsheet can have multiple charts (views)
 updating spreadsheet should result in updated charts
 example of multiple views, single controller, single model
Scaling an application
 view is desktop or web, model is a flat-file database
 updating the database to clustered set of SQL servers
 only model needs to take changes for architecture, controller connects
to new model and doesn’t know that the model is now backed by
several DBs instead of one file
Multiple user interfaces to application
 web interface, mobile phone interface, point-of-sale interface, desktop
interface
 multiple views, multiple controllers, single model
 Sample Implementation Review

Small WPF Application written in C# to illustrate how

MVC.

Email me if you would like a copy of the source code.

 Modern Implementations
 GUI Frameworks for desktop applications
 Application Kit – part of Cocoa for OS X desktop apps
 GTK+ - part of GTK libraries, used in lots of apps
 Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) – Document/View Architecture
 Java Swing
 Windows Presentation Framework (WPF)
 TK Toolkit – part of Tcl/Tk
 Implementations of MVC in web-based frameworks
 ASP .NET MVC Framework (.NET)
 ProMesh.NET (.NET)
 Grails (Java)
 Struts (Java)
 Spring (Java)
 PureMVC (JavaScript)
 Ruby on Rails (Ruby)
 Zend Framework (PHP)
 Django (Python)
 Pylons (Python)
 Fin.
Questions?
 Reference Links
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
 If you get nothing else from this talk, please go look this up – it is the most
important book I’ve read regarding object-oriented programming:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley-Professio

 MVC
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller
 http://www.ootips.org/mvc-pattern.html
 http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ModelViewController
 http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/smarch/st-docs/mvc.html

 Observer Pattern
 http://www.research.ibm.com/designpatterns/example.htm
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_pattern
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms954621.aspx