Model-View-Controller

Owned by Computer Science Department
Last updated: Jul 18, 2023
2 min read

Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a design pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divides the related program logic into three interconnected elements. This division helps to achieve separation of concerns, a principle in software engineering that promotes the organization of code into sections, each with a distinct responsibility.

 

Here's what each component does in the MVC pattern:

  1. Model: This is the part of the application that handles the logic for the application's data domain. It retrieves and stores model state in a database. The model is responsible for retrieving and storing data, as well as performing operations on the data. The model doesn't know anything about the view and controller.

  2. View: This is the part that renders the model data and generates the user interface which will be shown to the user. It's all about presentation. It's the application's representation to the user. This component will access data from the model and shows it to the user.

  3. Controller: This is the part that handles the user interaction. It processes and responds to user input and interacts with the model. It interprets the user's inputs and makes calls to model objects and the view to perform appropriate actions.

All these components communicate with each other. When a user interacts with the view and triggers an event (like clicking on a button), the controller handles this event and modifies the data in the model. In response, the model notifies the view about the data change, and the view updates itself accordingly.

This pattern is widely used in web development frameworks. The user sends a request through the view (the web page), the controller processes the request and fetches data from the database (the model), then sends the data back to the view (page) for the user to see the result.