Question

I find myself needing to have a View expose its Model and Controller references. Is this the smell of bad design? Or is this considered “safe” practice?

For example: I have a list (composed of a ListView, ListController, and ListModel) and many list items (composed of a ItemView, ItemController, and ItemModel).

When I create the ItemModel, ItemView, and ItemController for each list item, I pass the ItemView instance off to the ListView. But, at some later point, my ListController needs a reference to the corresponding ItemController instance.

So, would it be more proper to pass both the ItemView and the ItemController in to ListView::addItem(), or just pass in ItemView and expose an instance method such as ItemView::getController()?

Or doesn’t it matter? Is each approach equally viable? If followed to their logical conclusion, does either tactic result in an anti-pattern?

Answer 1

But, at some later point, my ListController needs a reference to the corresponding ItemController instance

Why? If you’re decoupling your classes properly, you shouldn’t need this.

Controllers almost always address a functional domain. An example of such a domain might be “Sales” or “Admin.” In addition, MVC also supports the use of “Areas,” which provides an additional hierarchical level of organization.

Adding references to controllers from other controllers is at cross-purposes with this organizational structure. If you need to combine functionality to make your code more DRY, ordinary refactoring will accomplish that. You can also inherit controllers from a base class containing common functionality.