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Asked: 2026-05-13T22:27:39+00:00

I’m working in a C# project and we are , in order to get

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I’m working in a C# project and we are , in order to get some unity across the different parts of our UI, trying to use the MVC pattern. The client is windows form based and I’m trying to create a simple MVC pattern implementation.

It’s been more challenging than expected, but I still have some questions regarding the MVC pattern. The problem comes mostly from the n-n relationships between its components: Here is what I’ve understood, but I’m not sure at all of it. Maybe someone can correct me?

  • Model: can be shared among different Views. 1-n relationship between Model-View
  • View: shows the state of the model. only one controller (can be shared among different views?). 1-1 relationship with the Model, 1-1 relationship with the controller
  • Controller: handles the user actions on the view and updates the model. One controller can be shared among different views, a controller interacts only with one model?

I’m not sure about the two last ones:

  • Can a view have several controller? Or can a view share a controller with another view? Or is it only a 1:1 relationship?
  • Can a controller handle several views? can it interact with several models?

Also, I take advantage of this question to ask another MVC related question. I’ve suppressed all the synchronous calls between the different members of the MVC, making use of the events and delegates. One last call is still synchronous and is actually the most important one: The call between the view and the controller is still synchronous, as I need to know rather the controller has been able to handle the user’s action or not. This is very bad as it means that I could block the UI thread (hence the client itself) while the controller is processing or doing some work. How can I avoid this? I can make use of the callback but then how do i know to which event the callback comes from?

PS: I can’t change the pattern at this stage, so please avoid answers of type “use MVP or MVVC, etc 😉

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Model, View, and Controller are conceptual layers, not individual objects, so honestly it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be thinking of them in terms of multiplicities. Nevertheless, I can try to approximate an answer for you.

    • A Controller returns a single result for a single action; that result may be an actual view or it may be something else. However, the Controller doesn’t really actually have any interaction with the view; all it does is provide one or two pieces of information in its result: The name of the view that should be used and (optionally) the model used to populate. It’s up to the View Engine to actually create and bind the view, which is a considerable departure from normal Smart Client UI logic.

    • A Controller may interact with several different pieces of the Model, or not interact with it at all in some cases; there is no rule for that side of the relationship. In an action result, a Controller has to give back either 0 or 1 instances of a “model”, but this may not be the true Domain Model, it could be a View Model.

    • A View is generally bound to exactly one Model (or View Model), although in some cases a View might simply be content and therefore not bound to anything.

    So, in the very crude UMLesque parlance:

    • Controller:Model = 0..* : 0..*
    • Controller:View = 0..* : 0..1 (request) or 0..* : 0..* (overall)
    • View:Model = 0..* : 0..1

    This is all specific to ASP.NET MVC. If you were designing your own MVC implementation then obviously you could choose to implement it any way you like. Good luck implementing MVC in WinForms, though; Forms don’t behave like Views at all, even patterns like MVP/MVVM are quite difficult (though not impossible, c.f. Microsoft’s CAB/SCSF) until you move to WPF.

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