Why is MVC so popular?

Question

I was originally going to make this a longer question, but I feel like the shorter I make it, the better you'll understand what I mean.

• The MVC architectural pattern has 3 dependencies. The View depends on the model. The Controller depends on the View and Model. The Model is independent.

• The Layers architectural pattern defines N - 1 dependencies, where N is the number of Layers.

Given three Layers: Model, View, and Controller, there are only 2 dependencies, as opposed to 3 with traditional MVC. The structure looks like this:

View ---> Controller ---> Model

[View depends on Controller, Controller depends on Model]

It seems to me that this style accomplishes the same goals and produces looser coupling. Why isn't this style more common? Does it truly accomplish the same goals?

Edit: Not ASP.NET MVC, just the pattern.

With regard to griegs's post:

• As far as mocking, Layers still allows you to use the Command Processor pattern to simulate button clicks, as well as any other range of events.
• UI changes are still very easy, perhaps even easier. In MVC, the Controller and View tend to mesh together. Layers creates a strict separation. Both Layers are black boxes, free to vary independently in implementation.
• The Controller has 0 dependencies on the View. The View can be written, and time can still be saved with loose coupling.

Answer 1

I think I'm understanding your point:

Yes you can make the View only depend on the Controller only by making the Controller transform (using PHP as an example) the Model objects to non-Model objects like simple arrays.

As we already know, performing this transformation can be more effort than it's worth if the decoupling isn't actually needed. If the View uses the Model objects then it has this dependency. However, this can be relieved a bit by having the View depend solely on the Controller for its required input, which can be Model objects.

The Symfony PHP framework promotes this style of skinny controller shuffling between Model and View. You can still directly call upon the Model layer to retrieve objects within the View layer but it's strongly urged against for the coupling issues you bring up. Within the View you can call include_component() which actually goes back up to the Controller if you need to query the Model.

Answer 2

I haven't gotten back to this in a long time, mostly because I was still thinking. I was unsatisfied with the answers I received, they didn't really answer my question.

A professor, recently, did steer me in the right direction. Essentially, he told me this: Layers which separate Model, View, and Controller is MVC. In the vanilla MVC architectural pattern, the dependency between the View to the Model is often not used, and you effectively end up with Layers. The idea is the same, the naming is just poor.

Answer 3

I'll be bold, and try to explain why your method didn't catch on.

The MVC pattern basically requires the view and model layers to agree on an API. Since one serves the other and there are no dependencies inside the code it leaves the controller to behave generically, all it needs to do is take a certain structure in the view layer and call the matching API on the model layer.

You'll note that agreeing on an API between the view and model isn't really such a big deal it has to happen anyway. And what you get is good separation between back-end front-end development.

In your proposed solution a lot of development is required on the controller side. The controller will be required to understand all the elements in the view and to map them to the specific calls required on the model layer. Since the controller is a single access point connecting many views to many models this can quickly get out of hand and end up being an incomprehensible controller module.

Look at some Struts2 examples to see what I mean...

Answer 4

In proper MVC the controller doesn't depend on the view afaik. Or maybe I'm not understanding it correctly.

The model defines the data.

The view defines what the output looks like.

And the controller is a translator from a model-understood grammar to view-understood grammar.

So essentially the controller is independent. The view is independent. And the model is independent.

Yes? No?

Answer 5

In my opinion ,you'd better try it in your programme , you can use ruby on rails ,or codeigniter( for php ),these great framework may be helpful to your understanding the MVC.

Answer 6

Choosing a presentation pattern for a new or enterprise web development on the Microsoft platform is a daunting task, in my opinion there are only three; View Model, Model-View-Presenter (MVP) or ASP.NET MVC (a Model2 derivative).

You can read the full article here ASP.NET MVC Patterns