Question

I have a question about MVC. Particularly about models.
Suppose that I have a category table in my database. Now I would like to get results both for a single category for detailed view and multiple categories for a listing. Also I may need to query a number of categories for different purposes.

Now the question is;
Does it make more sense to have two separate models. Like category model for operations on a single category and categories model operations on multiple categories.

My thinking is that when I am using category model I don’t need additional details for multiple categories. So separating these makes sense to me. But I am not sure.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

It depends, do you need to save different data for a single category and for multiple categories?

If so, your proposal makes sense as otherwise you would have redundant fields in your model. I would advise making a clear distinction between both models (so not Category and Categories, but for example SingleCategory and MultipleCategories).

If not, I would suggest having one model for a Category, but with different operations defined for single and multiple category operations. I assume this is your situation.

In the latter case, you can make use of an abstract super class Category and then define two children: one that contains operations for single categories and one that contains operations for multiple categories.