Question

Users on my site have their profile page. There, users can setup their data. On edit button press this page become editable.

Now another user can explore other users profiles.

So I wonder here:

1. Should I make two controllers ProfileController/Index and ProfileAsAnotherUserSeeItController/Index. First use profile owner to setup data and another use other users to see those data?
2. Have just one controller ProfileController/Index and based on some parameters decide what data to display (edit buttons, remove profile page items buttons etc.)?

Answer 1

Personally, I would have a single controller => AccountsController or UsersController. In that I would have an ActionMethod called Details which lists all the details for a particular user.

If my site was StackOverflow, a sample route would be: http://stackoverflow.com/users/30674/pure-krome

which translates to

{controller}/details/{id}/{optional anything .. which in this case is a name, for SEO}

I would also have an Edit action method

eg
http://stackoverflow.com/users/edit/30674

or

{controller}/{action}/{id}

Now, the logic in the Details Action Method would determine what is to be displayed on the view. So, if you want to have an Edit button, the controller action method should figure this out and the view will only display it, if it’s been told to.

eg (pseduo code)

public ActionResult Details(int userId)
{
    var user = Database.Load<User>(userId);
    if (user == null)
    {
        return HttpNotFound();
    }

    var viewModel = new DetailsViewModel
                    {
                        DisplayName = user.DisplayName,
                        Name = (user.FirstName + " " + user.LastName).Trim()
                    };
    if (LoggedInUser != null && LoggedInUser.HasRole(Roles.CanEditThisUser)
    {
        viewModel.IsEditButtonVisible = true;
    }

    return View(viewModel);
}

and the view will be simple.. like

<snip html stuff>
@if (model.IsEditButtonVisible)
{
    // display edit button Html code.
}

// Display user details Html stuff..

Things to note :-

1. Views are strongly typed to their own ViewModel.
2. The Controller does all the figuring out of things.
3. View is really really dumb.