model calling view, or view calling model?

Question

In my previous company which had an all-ajax web ap, there was a from-scratch framework being used. The way page sections refreshed was that you'd call the controller with a string, and the controller would load one or more view files. The view file would almost always call a class or classes in the model. This was as it was when I got there.

I am now working with a new company to develop a new system and looking at framework candidate. A 30 minute tutorial on codeigniter shows the controller calling the model, and the model loading the view.

This is opposite to what I am used to from my experience, so I wanted to ask which strategy is more common. In my mind it seems more rational that the view is a "shell" or structure but which is restricted to needing the model to get to the business rules.

I'm not sure if I should share a link here, I am NOT trying to promote codeigniter, but the tutorial is located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47VOtKiw9AQ at about 10:00. Thanks

Answer 1

tutorials. there are a lot of them.

controller calls the model and passes data to the view. thats the standard answer. however i'm now leaning towards - the controller assigns specific views, and then calls a template, passing $data.

and then in the template -- there are calls to a model to create the navigation bars for that template, and optionally a page display model.

otherwise -- either you have my_controller which everything passes through that could have calls to page display, navigation, etc.

Or you have to put page display details in every single controller. personally i'm not a big fan of the my_controller design pattern, and calls to a navbar in complex controllers are not optimal.

so in that case what might be considered a view -- a simple template file -- would be calling a model. but in this case its not really a "view" because its not displaying anything directly -- the template is calling the nav view, the header, the footer view, etc etc -- and then the actual page content is assigned by the controller.

this also gives you more portability - when you need to change details about the page display or navigation you only have to go to one place.

finally there's many php frameworks and many opinions. after a long dormant period the codeigniter framework is under active development. however if you are starting from square one take a look at Node as well, it has some compelling features depending on your use case.