Question

Simply put, MVC is the pattern for separating contents (model) from presentation (view), and having a mechanism in place (controller) defining how to gather both.

If you already see where I am going at, I am very interested to hear your opinion on the matter. Of course, MVC applies to serverside mechanics and all, but think out of the box here with me for a second.

"Visitors" of the web, both human and robot/Google will be likely to see HTML and what comes with it. Writing structured and meaningful HTML, together with separating it from presentation using CSS has become more important over the years, and future technology such as HTML5 only contributes to this separation by offering a more content-focused set of elements, and mechanisms for working with the pure visual representation.

Considering all this, I was wondering if it would be correct in some way to say that the MVC paradigm applies to the front-end as well, where:

• The model would be HTML, as in the pure httpwise contents that it has become
• The view being CSS; it makes your content be presented a certain way
• The controller being the webserver and all that lies underneath, it is what gathers and separates the model and view, and does all the decision making

Makes sense? Not?

VonC pointed me to an article that definitely changed my thoughts on the controller part. The browser takes up a major part of the controller too, as it handles a great deal of user interaction and how the model and view work together.

Answer 1

I would agree, although one can argue about the controller.

Jeff illustrates that point in his post, with ZenGarden

With:

• Model = HTML
• View = CSS
• Controller = Browser (which is more ‘front-end’ than the web-server)

Actually, this is a valid perspective from the client-side.

From the server side (a server more complex than a simple html-page server), MVC would be different.

With ASP.Net for instance;

• Model = all of your application logic that is not contained in a view or a controller. The model should contain all of your application business logic and database access logic. For example, if you are using LINQ to SQL to access your database, then you would create your LINQ to SQL classes (your dbml file) in the Models folder
• View = HTML markup and content that is sent to the browser, plus scripts
• Controller = responsible for controlling the way that a user interacts with an MVC application. A controller determines what response to send back to a user when a user makes a browser request.A controller is just a class (for example, a Visual Basic or C# class).

That is a services-ide perspective of MVC