Question

I have traditionally implemented a Model-View-Presenter [Passive View] like so:

interface IView
{
string Title {set;}
}

class frmTextBox : Form, IView
{
...
public string Title
{
set { this.txtTitle.Text = value; }
}
...
}


class frmLabel : Form, IView
{
...
public string Title
{
set { this.lblTitle.Text = value; }
}
...
}

class Presenter
{
private IView view;
...
public void UpdateTitle
{
this.view.Title = "A Good Title";
}
...
}

and I have traditionally only used primitive types in the IView interface (int, string, bool) because I have always understood that you need to use primitive types only in the View. In a Repository (such as NHibernate), if I want to display a list of items in a DataGridView, I have to pass a generic collection (IList<T>) from the Model to the Presenter. Does that violate the rule behind views as consisting only of primitive types or would this architecturally be OK?

Even if I had a Data Transfer Object (DTO), that would be more of a supervising controller rather than passive view style I am trying to implement.

Thoughts??

Answer 1

Patterns exist to help you design your solution based on others’ experiences.

They are nothing more than formalized templates.

Use whatever structure makes you more productive, even if it doesn’t fit an arbitrary definition perfectly.