What are MVP and MVC and what is the difference?

Asked 2023-09-20 20:32:37 View 249,543

When looking beyond the RAD (drag-drop and configure) way of building user interfaces that many tools encourage you are likely to come across three design patterns called Model-View-Controller, Model-View-Presenter and Model-View-ViewModel. My question has three parts to it:

  1. What issues do these patterns address?
  2. How are they similar?
  3. How are they different?
  • mvc.givan.se/#mvp - anyone
  • IDK, but supposedly for the original MVC, it was meant to be used in the small. Each button, label, etc, had its' own view and controller object, or at least that is what Uncle Bob claims. I think he was talking about Smalltalk. Look up his talks on YouTube, they are fascinating. - anyone
  • MVP adds an extra layer of indirection by splitting the View-Controller into a View and a Presenter... - anyone
  • The main difference is that in MVC the Controller does not pass any data from the Model to the View. It just notifies the View to get the data from the Model itself. However, in MVP, there is no connection between the View and Model. The Presenter itself gets any data needed from the Model and passes it to the View to show. More to this together with an android sample in all architecture patterns is here: digigene.com/category/android/android-architecture - anyone
  • They are called architectural patterns not design patterns. If you want to know the difference, check this - anyone

Answers

Model-View-Presenter

In MVP, the Presenter contains the UI business logic for the View. All invocations from the View delegate directly to the Presenter. The Presenter is also decoupled directly from the View and talks to it through an interface. This is to allow mocking of the View in a unit test. One common attribute of MVP is that there has to be a lot of two-way dispatching. For example, when someone clicks the "Save" button, the event handler delegates to the Presenter's "OnSave" method. Once the save is completed, the Presenter will then call back the View through its interface so that the View can display that the save has completed.

MVP tends to be a very natural pattern for achieving separated presentation in WebForms. The reason is that the View is always created first by the ASP.NET runtime. You can find out more about both variants.

Two primary variations

Passive View: The View is as dumb as possible and contains almost zero logic. A Presenter is a middle man that talks to the View and the Model. The View and Model are completely shielded from one another. The Model may raise events, but the Presenter subscribes to them for updating the View. In Passive View there is no direct data binding, instead, the View exposes setter properties that the Presenter uses to set the data. All state is managed in the Presenter and not the View.

  • Pro: maximum testability surface; clean separation of the View and Model
  • Con: more work (for example all the setter properties) as you are doing all the data binding yourself.

Supervising Controller: The Presenter handles user gestures. The View binds to the Model directly through data binding. In this case, it's the Presenter's job to pass off the Model to the View so that it can bind to it. The Presenter will also contain logic for gestures like pressing a button, navigation, etc.

  • Pro: by leveraging data binding the amount of code is reduced.
  • Con: there's a less testable surface (because of data binding), and there's less encapsulation in the View since it talks directly to the Model.

Model-View-Controller

In the MVC, the Controller is responsible for determining which View to display in response to any action including when the application loads. This differs from MVP where actions route through the View to the Presenter. In MVC, every action in the View correlates with a call to a Controller along with an action. In the web, each action involves a call to a URL on the other side of which there is a Controller who responds. Once that Controller has completed its processing, it will return the correct View. The sequence continues in that manner throughout the life of the application:

    Action in the View
        -> Call to Controller
        -> Controller Logic
        -> Controller returns the View.

One other big difference about MVC is that the View does not directly bind to the Model. The view simply renders and is completely stateless. In implementations of MVC, the View usually will not have any logic in the code behind. This is contrary to MVP where it is absolutely necessary because, if the View does not delegate to the Presenter, it will never get called.

Presentation Model

One other pattern to look at is the Presentation Model pattern. In this pattern, there is no Presenter. Instead, the View binds directly to a Presentation Model. The Presentation Model is a Model crafted specifically for the View. This means this Model can expose properties that one would never put on a domain model as it would be a violation of separation-of-concerns. In this case, the Presentation Model binds to the domain model and may subscribe to events coming from that Model. The View then subscribes to events coming from the Presentation Model and updates itself accordingly. The Presentation Model can expose commands which the view uses for invoking actions. The advantage of this approach is that you can essentially remove the code-behind altogether as the PM completely encapsulates all of the behavior for the view. This pattern is a very strong candidate for use in WPF applications and is also called Model-View-ViewModel.

There is a MSDN article about the Presentation Model and a section in the Composite Application Guidance for WPF (former Prism) about Separated Presentation Patterns

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • Can you please clarify this phrase? This differs from MVP where actions route through the View to the Presenter. In MVC, every action in the View correlates with a call to a Controller along with an action. To me, it sounds like the same thing, but I'm sure you're describing something different. - anyone
  • @Panzercrisis I'm not sure if this is what the author meant, but this is what I think they were trying to say. Like this answer - stackoverflow.com/a/2068/74556 mentions, in MVC, controller methods are based on behaviors -- in other words, you can map multiple views (but same behavior) to a single controller. In MVP, the presenter is coupled closer to the view, and usually results in a mapping that is closer to one-to-one, i.e. a view action maps to its corresponding presenter's method. You typically wouldn't map another view's actions to another presenter's (from another view) method. - anyone
  • Note that MVC is often used by web-frameworks like Laravel, where the received URL requests (maybe made by users) are handled by the Controller and the HTML generated by the View is sent to the client -- So, the View is a part of the backend and the user can never access it directly, and if you experience anywhere the opposite then consider that as an MVC-extension (or even violation). @Panzercrisis, This differs from MVP (like that used in Android OS) where actions route through the View to the Presenter and user have direct access to the View. - anyone
  • What the author describes when speaking about MVC isn't the original Smalltalk MVC (whose flow is triangular) but the "Web MVC" where the controller renders a view using a model and returns it to the user. I believe this is worth noting because this creates a lot of confusion. - anyone

This is an oversimplification of the many variants of these design patterns, but this is how I like to think about the differences between the two.

MVC

MVC

MVP

enter image description here

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • This is a great depiction of the schematic, showing the abstraction and complete isolation of any GUI related (view stuff) from the API of the presenter. One minor point: A master presenter could be used where there is only one presenter, rather than one per view, but your diagram is the cleanest. IMO, the biggest difference between MVC/MVP is that MVP tries to keep the view totally void of anything other than display of the current 'view state' (view data), while also disallowing the view any knowledge of Model objects. Thus the interfaces, needing to be there, to inject that state. - anyone
  • Good picture. I use MVP quite a lot, so I'd like to make one point. In my experience, the Presenters need to talk to one another quite often. Same is true for the Models (or Business objects). Because of these additional "blue lines" of communication that would be in your MVP pic, the Presenter-Model relationships can become quite entangled. Therefore, I tend to keep a one-to-one Presenter-Model relationship vs. a one-to-many. Yes, it requires some additional delegate methods on the Model, but it reduces many headaches if the API of the Model changes or needs refactoring. - anyone
  • The MVC example is wrong; there's a strict 1:1 relationship between views and controllers. By definition, a controller interprets human gesture input to produce events for the model and view alike for a single control. More simply, MVC was intended for use with individual widgets only. One widget, one view, one control. - anyone
  • @SamuelA.FalvoII not always, there is a 1:Many between controllers and views in ASP.NET MVC: stackoverflow.com/questions/1673301/… - anyone
  • @StuperUser -- Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that. You're right, of course, and looking back on what I wrote, I have to wonder if I had some other context in mind which I failed to articulate. Thanks for the correction. - anyone

I blogged about this a while back, quoting on Todd Snyder's excellent post on the difference between the two:

Here are the key differences between the patterns:

MVP Pattern

  • View is more loosely coupled to the model. The presenter is responsible for binding the model to the view.
  • Easier to unit test because interaction with the view is through an interface
  • Usually view to presenter map one to one. Complex views may have multi presenters.

MVC Pattern

  • Controller are based on behaviors and can be shared across views
  • Can be responsible for determining which view to display

It is the best explanation on the web I could find.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • I don't understand how in the view can be coupled more or less closely to the model when in both cases the entire point is to completely decouple them. I'm not implying you said something wrong--just confused as to what you mean. - anyone
  • @pst: with MVP it's really 1 View = 1 Presenter. With MVC, the Controller can govern multiple views. That's it, really. With the "tabs" model imagine each tab having its own Presenter as opposed to having one Controller for all tabs. - anyone
  • Originally there are two types of controllers: the one which you said to be shared across multiple views, and those who are views specific, mainly purposed for adapting the interface of the shared controller. - anyone
  • @JonLimjap What does it mean by one view anyway? In the context of iOS programming, is it one-screenful? Does this make iOS's controller more like MVP than MVC? (On the other hand you can also have multiple iOS controllers per screen) - anyone
  • Well Todd's diagramatic illustration of MVC completely contradicts the idea of decoupling the View and Model. If you look at the diagram, it says Model updates View (arrow from Model to View). In which universe is a system, where the Model directly interacts with the View, a decoupled one??? - anyone

Here are illustrations which represent communication flow

enter image description here

enter image description here

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • I have a question regarding the MVC diagram. I don't get the part where the view goes out to fetch data .I would think the controller would forward to the view with the data needed. - anyone
  • If a user clicks a button, how is that not interacting with the view? I feel like in MVC, the user interacts with the view more than the controller - anyone
  • I know this is an old answer - but could anyone respond on @JonathanLeaders point? I'm coming from a winforms background unless you did some very unique coding, when you click the UI/View gets knowledge of that click before anything else. At least, as far as I know? - anyone
  • @RobP. I think these kinds of charts always tend to be either too complex, or too simple. Imo the flow of the MVP chart also holds true for a MVC application. There might be variations, depending on the languages features (data binding / observer), but in the end the idea is to decouple the view from the data/logic of the application. - anyone
  • @JonathanLeaders People have really different things in mind when they say "MVC". Person who created this chart had probably classic Web MVC in mind, where the "user input" are HTTP requests, and "view returned to user" is a rendered HTML page. So any interaction between a user and a view are "not existent" from the perspective of an author of classical Web MVC app. - anyone

MVP is not necessarily a scenario where the View is in charge (see Taligent's MVP for example).
I find it unfortunate that people are still preaching this as a pattern (View in charge) as opposed to an anti-pattern as it contradicts "It's just a view" (Pragmatic Programmer). "It's just a view" states that the final view shown to the user is a secondary concern of the application. Microsoft's MVP pattern renders re-use of Views much more difficult and conveniently excuses Microsoft's designer from encouraging bad practice.

To be perfectly frank, I think the underlying concerns of MVC hold true for any MVP implementation and the differences are almost entirely semantic. As long as you are following separation of concerns between the view (that displays the data), the controller (that initialises and controls user interaction) and the model (the underlying data and/or services)) then you are achieving the benefits of MVC. If you are achieving the benefits then who really cares whether your pattern is MVC, MVP or Supervising Controller? The only real pattern remains as MVC, the rest are just differing flavours of it.

Consider this highly exciting article that comprehensively lists a number of these differing implementations. You may note that they're all basically doing the same thing but slightly differently.

I personally think MVP has only been recently re-introduced as a catchy term to either reduce arguments between semantic bigots who argue whether something is truly MVC or not or to justify Microsofts Rapid Application Development tools. Neither of these reasons in my books justify its existence as a separate design pattern.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • I've read several answers and blogs about the differences between MVC/MVP/MVVM/etc'. In effect, when you are down to business, it's all the same. It doesn't really matter whether you have an interface or not, and whether you are using a setter (or any other language feature). It appears that the difference between these patterns was born from the difference of various frameworks' implementations, rather than a matter of concept. - anyone
  • I wouldn't call MVP an anti-pattern, as later in the post "..the rest [including MVP] are just differing flavours of [MVC]..", which would imply that if MVP was an anti-pattern, so was MVC... it's just a flavor for a different framework's approach. (Now, some specific MVP implementations might be more or less desirable than some specific MVC implementations for different tasks...) - anyone
  • @Quibblsome: “I personally think MVP has only been recently re-introduced as a catchy term to either reduce arguments between semantic bigots who argue whether something is truly MVC or not […] Neither of these reasons in my books justify its existence as a separate design pattern.” . It differs enough to make it distinct. In MVP, the view may be anything fulfilling a predefined interface (the View in MVP is a standalone component). In MVC, the Controller is made for a particular view (if relation's arities may make someone feel that's worth another term). - anyone
  • @Hibou57, there is nothing to stop MVC from referencing the view as an interface or creating a generic controller for several different views. - anyone
  • Samuel please clarify what you're talking about. Unless you're telling me the history of the team that "invented" MVC then I'm incredibly dubious about your text. If you're just talking about WinForm then there are other ways of doing things and I've created WinForm projects where control bindings are managed by the controller, not "individual controls". - anyone

MVP: the view is in charge.

The view, in most cases, creates its presenter. The presenter will interact with the model and manipulate the view through an interface. The view will sometimes interact with the presenter, usually through some interface. This comes down to implementation; do you want the view to call methods on the presenter or do you want the view to have events the presenter listens to? It boils down to this: The view knows about the presenter. The view delegates to the presenter.

MVC: the controller is in charge.

The controller is created or accessed based on some event/request. The controller then creates the appropriate view and interacts with the model to further configure the view. It boils down to: the controller creates and manages the view; the view is slave to the controller. The view does not know about the controller.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • "View does not know about Controller." I think you mean that view has no contact directly with the model? - anyone
  • view should never know about the model in eiether one. - anyone
  • @Brian: “The View, in most cases, creates it's Presenter.” . I mostly seen the opposite, with the Presenter launching both the Model and the View. Well, the View may launch the Presenter too, but that point is not really the most distinctive. What matters the most happens later during lifetime. - anyone
  • You may want to edit your answer to explain further: Since the View does not know about the Controller, how are user actions, which are performed on the 'visual' elements the user sees on screen (i.e the View), communicated to the Controller... - anyone

enter image description here

MVC (Model View Controller)

The input is directed at the Controller first, not the view. That input might be coming from a user interacting with a page, but it could also be from simply entering a specific url into a browser. In either case, its a Controller that is interfaced with to kick off some functionality. There is a many-to-one relationship between the Controller and the View. That’s because a single controller may select different views to be rendered based on the operation being executed. Note the one way arrow from Controller to View. This is because the View doesn’t have any knowledge of or reference to the controller. The Controller does pass back the Model, so there is knowledge between the View and the expected Model being passed into it, but not the Controller serving it up.

MVP (Model View Presenter)

The input begins with the View, not the Presenter. There is a one-to-one mapping between the View and the associated Presenter. The View holds a reference to the Presenter. The Presenter is also reacting to events being triggered from the View, so its aware of the View its associated with. The Presenter updates the View based on the requested actions it performs on the Model, but the View is not Model aware.

For more Reference

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • But in MVP pattern, when the application loads for the first time , isn't the presenter is responsible to load the first view? Like for example when we load the facebook applicaiton, isn't the presenter responsible to load the login page? - anyone
  • A link from Model to View in MVC? You may want to edit your answer to explain how this makes it a 'decoupled' system, given this link. Hint: You may find it hard. Also, unless you think the reader will happily accept they've been computing wrong their whole life, you may want to elaborate on why actions go through Controller first in MVC despite the user interacting with the 'visual' elements on the screen (i.e the View), not some abstract layer that sits behind doing processing. - anyone
  • This Is clearly wrong... in MVC, model never talks directly with view and vice versa. They don't even know other one exists. The controller is the glue that holds them together - anyone
  • I agree with Ash and MegaManX. In the MVC diagram, the arrow should be from the View pointing to the Model (or ViewModel, or DTO), not from Model to the View; because the Model does not know about the View, but the view might know about the Model. - anyone
  • Actually, I think based on the original SmallTalk triangular MVC, the Model-View link is correct: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MVC-Process.svg#/media/… . The problem I see is the input to the Controller and its link to the View. Normally the user interacts with the view, so the View should be linked towards the Controller. - anyone

There are many answers to the question, but I felt there is a need for some really simple answer clearly comparing the two. Here's the discussion I made up when a user searches for a movie name in an MVP and MVC app:

User: Click click …

View: Who’s that? [MVP|MVC]

User: I just clicked on the search button …

View: Ok, hold on a sec … . [MVP|MVC]

( View calling the Presenter|Controller … ) [MVP|MVC]

View: Hey Presenter|Controller, a User has just clicked on the search button, what shall I do? [MVP|MVC]

Presenter|Controller: Hey View, is there any search term on that page? [MVP|MVC]

View: Yes,… here it is … “piano” [MVP|MVC]

Presenter|Controller: Thanks View,… meanwhile I’m looking up the search term on the Model, please show him/her a progress bar [MVP|MVC]

( Presenter|Controller is calling the Model … ) [MVP|MVC]

Presenter|Controller: Hey Model, Do you have any match for this search term?: “piano” [MVP|MVC]

Model: Hey Presenter|Controller, let me check … [MVP|MVC]

( Model is making a query to the movie database … ) [MVP|MVC]

( After a while ... )

-------------- This is where MVP and MVC start to diverge ---------------

Model: I found a list for you, Presenter, here it is in JSON “[{"name":"Piano Teacher","year":2001},{"name":"Piano","year":1993}]” [MVP]

Model: There is some result available, Controller. I have created a field variable in my instance and filled it with the result. It's name is "searchResultsList" [MVC]

(Presenter|Controller thanks Model and gets back to the View) [MVP|MVC]

Presenter: Thanks for waiting View, I found a list of matching results for you and arranged them in a presentable format: ["Piano Teacher 2001","Piano 1993"]. Please show it to the user in a vertical list. Also please hide the progress bar now [MVP]

Controller: Thanks for waiting View, I have asked Model about your search query. It says it has found a list of matching results and stored them in a variable named "searchResultsList" inside its instance. You can get it from there. Also please hide the progress bar now [MVC]

View: Thank you very much Presenter [MVP]

View: Thank you "Controller" [MVC] (Now the View is questioning itself: How should I present the results I get from the Model to the user? Should the production year of the movie come first or last...? Should it be in a vertical or horizontal list? ...)

In case you're interested, I have been writing a series of articles dealing with app architectural patterns (MVC, MVP, MVVP, clean architecture, ...) accompanied by a Github repo here. Even though the sample is written for android, the underlying principles can be applied to any medium.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • Basically what you're trying to say is that the controller micromanages the view logic? So it makes the view dumber by presenting what happens and how on views? - anyone
  • @Radu, No, it does not micromanage, that is what the presenter does by making the view passive or dumb - anyone
  • In a proper MVC, the view invokes functionality on the controller, and listens to data changes in the model. The view does not get data from the controller, and the controller should NOT tell the view to display, for instance, a loading indicator. A proper MVC allows you to replace the view part, with one that is fundamentally different. The view part holds view logic, that includes a loading indicator. The view invokes instructions (in controller), controller modifies data in the model, and the model notifies its listeners of changes to its data, one such listener is the view. - anyone

Model-View-Controller

MVC is a pattern for the architecture of a software application. It separate the application logic into three separate parts, promoting modularity and ease of collaboration and reuse. It also makes applications more flexible and welcoming to iterations.It separates an application into the following components:

  • Models for handling data and business logic
  • Controllers for handling the user interface and application
  • Views for handling graphical user interface objects and presentation

To make this a little more clear, let's imagine a simple shopping list app. All we want is a list of the name, quantity and price of each item we need to buy this week. Below we'll describe how we could implement some of this functionality using MVC.

enter image description here

Model-View-Presenter

  • The model is the data that will be displayed in the view (user interface).
  • The view is an interface that displays data (the model) and routes user commands (events) to the Presenter to act upon that data. The view usually has a reference to its Presenter.
  • The Presenter is the “middle-man” (played by the controller in MVC) and has references to both, view and model. Please note that the word “Model” is misleading. It should rather be business logic that retrieves or manipulates a Model. For instance: If you have a database storing User in a database table and your View wants to display a list of users, then the Presenter would have a reference to your database business logic (like a DAO) from where the Presenter will query a list of Users.

If you want to see a sample with simple implementation please check this GitHub post

A concrete workflow of querying and displaying a list of users from a database could work like this: enter image description here

What is the difference between MVC and MVP patterns?

MVC Pattern

  • Controller are based on behaviors and can be shared across views

  • Can be responsible for determining which view to display (Front Controller Pattern)

MVP Pattern

  • View is more loosely coupled to the model. The presenter is responsible for binding the model to the view.

  • Easier to unit test because interaction with the view is through an interface

  • Usually view to presenter map one to one. Complex views may have multi presenters.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • MVP = Model-View-Presenter
  • MVC = Model-View-Controller

    1. Both presentation patterns. They separate the dependencies between a Model (think Domain objects), your screen/web page (the View), and how your UI is supposed to behave (Presenter/Controller)
    2. They are fairly similar in concept, folks initialize the Presenter/Controller differently depending on taste.
    3. A great article on the differences is here. Most notable is that MVC pattern has the Model updating the View.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • Model updating the VIew. And this still is a decoupled system? - anyone

Also worth remembering is that there are different types of MVPs as well. Fowler has broken the pattern into two - Passive View and Supervising Controller.

When using Passive View, your View typically implement a fine-grained interface with properties mapping more or less directly to the underlaying UI widget. For instance, you might have a ICustomerView with properties like Name and Address.

Your implementation might look something like this:

public class CustomerView : ICustomerView
{
    public string Name
    { 
        get { return txtName.Text; }
        set { txtName.Text = value; }
    }
}

Your Presenter class will talk to the model and "map" it to the view. This approach is called the "Passive View". The benefit is that the view is easy to test, and it is easier to move between UI platforms (Web, Windows/XAML, etc.). The disadvantage is that you can't leverage things like databinding (which is really powerful in frameworks like WPF and Silverlight).

The second flavor of MVP is the Supervising Controller. In that case your View might have a property called Customer, which then again is databound to the UI widgets. You don't have to think about synchronizing and micro-manage the view, and the Supervising Controller can step in and help when needed, for instance with compled interaction logic.

The third "flavor" of MVP (or someone would perhaps call it a separate pattern) is the Presentation Model (or sometimes referred to Model-View-ViewModel). Compared to the MVP you "merge" the M and the P into one class. You have your customer object which your UI widgets is data bound to, but you also have additional UI-spesific fields like "IsButtonEnabled", or "IsReadOnly", etc.

I think the best resource I've found to UI architecture is the series of blog posts done by Jeremy Miller over at The Build Your Own CAB Series Table of Contents. He covered all the flavors of MVP and showed C# code to implement them.

I have also blogged about the Model-View-ViewModel pattern in the context of Silverlight over at YouCard Re-visited: Implementing the ViewModel pattern.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

Both of these frameworks aim to seperate concerns - for instance, interaction with a data source (model), application logic (or turning this data into useful information) (Controller/Presenter) and display code (View). In some cases the model can also be used to turn a data source into a higher level abstraction as well. A good example of this is the MVC Storefront project.

There is a discussion here regarding the differences between MVC vs MVP.

The distinction made is that in an MVC application traditionally has the view and the controller interact with the model, but not with each other.

MVP designs have the Presenter access the model and interact with the view.

Having said that, ASP.NET MVC is by these definitions an MVP framework because the Controller accesses the Model to populate the View which is meant to have no logic (just displays the variables provided by the Controller).

To perhaps get an idea of the ASP.NET MVC distinction from MVP, check out this MIX presentation by Scott Hanselman.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • MVC and MVP are patterns, not frameworks. If you honestly think, that topic was about .NET framework, then it is like hearing "the internet" and thinking it is about IE. - anyone
  • Pretty sure the question has evolved significantly from when it was first asked back in 2008. Additionally, looking back at my answer (and this was 4 years ago so I have not a lot more context than you) I'd say I start generally and then use .NET MVC as a concrete example. - anyone

Both are patterns trying to separate presentation and business logic, decoupling business logic from UI aspects

Architecturally, MVP is Page Controller based approach where MVC is Front Controller based approach. That means that in MVP standard web form page life cycle is just enhanced by extracting the business logic from code behind. In other words, page is the one servicing http request. In other words, MVP IMHO is web form evolutionary type of enhancement. MVC on other hand changes completely the game because the request gets intercepted by controller class before page is loaded, the business logic is executed there and then at the end result of controller processing the data just dumped to the page ("view") In that sense, MVC looks (at least to me) a lot to Supervising Controller flavor of MVP enhanced with routing engine

Both of them enable TDD and have downsides and upsides.

Decision on how to choose one of them IMHO should be based on how much time one invested in ASP NET web form type of web development. If one would consider himself good in web forms, I would suggest MVP. If one would feel not so comfortable in things such as page life cycle etc MVC could be a way to go here.

Here's yet another blog post link giving a little bit more details on this topic

http://blog.vuscode.com/malovicn/archive/2007/12/18/model-view-presenter-mvp-vs-model-view-controller-mvc.aspx

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

I have used both MVP and MVC and although we as developers tend to focus on the technical differences of both patterns the point for MVP in IMHO is much more related to ease of adoption than anything else.

If I’m working in a team that already as a good background on web forms development style it’s far easier to introduce MVP than MVC. I would say that MVP in this scenario is a quick win.

My experience tells me that moving a team from web forms to MVP and then from MVP to MVC is relatively easy; moving from web forms to MVC is more difficult.

I leave here a link to a series of articles a friend of mine has published about MVP and MVC.

http://www.qsoft.be/post/Building-the-MVP-StoreFront-Gutthrie-style.aspx

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

In MVP the view draws data from the presenter which draws and prepares/normalizes data from the model while in MVC the controller draws data from the model and set, by push in the view.

In MVP you can have a single view working with multiple types of presenters and a single presenter working with different multiple views.

MVP usually uses some sort of a binding framework, such as Microsoft WPF binding framework or various binding frameworks for HTML5 and Java.

In those frameworks, the UI/HTML5/XAML, is aware of what property of the presenter each UI element displays, so when you bind a view to a presenter, the view looks for the properties and knows how to draw data from them and how to set them when a value is changed in the UI by the user.

So, if for example, the model is a car, then the presenter is some sort of a car presenter, exposes the car properties (year, maker, seats, etc.) to the view. The view knows that the text field called 'car maker' needs to display the presenter Maker property.

You can then bind to the view many different types of presenter, all must have Maker property - it can be of a plane, train or what ever , the view doesn't care. The view draws data from the presenter - no matter which - as long as it implements an agreed interface.

This binding framework, if you strip it down, it's actually the controller :-)

And so, you can look on MVP as an evolution of MVC.

MVC is great, but the problem is that usually its controller per view. Controller A knows how to set fields of View A. If now, you want View A to display data of model B, you need Controller A to know model B, or you need Controller A to receive an object with an interface - which is like MVP only without the bindings, or you need to rewrite the UI set code in Controller B.

Conclusion - MVP and MVC are both decouple of UI patterns, but MVP usually uses a bindings framework which is MVC underneath. THUS MVP is at a higher architectural level than MVC and a wrapper pattern above of MVC.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

My humble short view: MVP is for large scales, and MVC for tiny scales. With MVC, I sometime feel the V and the C may be seen a two sides of a single indivisible component rather directly bound to M, and one inevitably falls to this when going down‑to shorter scales, like UI controls and base widgets. At this level of granularity, MVP makes little sense. When one on the contrary go to larger scales, proper interface becomes more important, the same with unambiguous assignment of responsibilities, and here comes MVP.

On the other hand, this scale rule of a thumb, may weight very little when the platform characteristics favours some kind of relations between the components, like with the web, where it seems to be easier to implement MVC, more than MVP.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

I think this image by Erwin Vandervalk (and the accompanying article) is the best explanation of MVC, MVP, and MVVM, their similarities, and their differences. The article does not show up in search engine results for queries on "MVC, MVP, and MVVM" because the title of the article does not contain the words "MVC" and "MVP"; but it is the best explanation, I think.

image explaining MVC, MVP and MVVM - by Erwin Vandervalk

(The article also matches what Uncle Bob Martin said in his one of his talks: that MVC was originally designed for the small UI components, not for the architecture of the system)

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

There are many versions of MVC, this answer is about the original MVC in Smalltalk. In brief, it is image of mvc vs mvp

This talk droidcon NYC 2017 - Clean app design with Architecture Components clarifies it

enter image description here enter image description here

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • In the MVC the Model is never called directly from the view - anyone
  • This is an inaccurate answer. Do not be misled. as @rodi writes, there is no interaction between the View and Model. - anyone
  • The MVC image is inaccurate or at best misleading, please do not pay any attention to this answer. - anyone
  • @Jay1b What MVC do you think is "correct"? This answer is about the original MVC. There's many other MVC (like in iOS) that was changed to adapt to the platform, say like UIKit - anyone
  • What do the arrows mean? - anyone

MVC (Model-View-Controller)

In MVC, the Controller is the one in charge! The Controller is triggered or accessed based on some events/requests then, manages the Views.

Views in MVC are virtually stateless, the Controller is responsible for choosing which View to show.

E.g.: When the user clicks on the “Show MyProfile” button, the Controller is triggered. It communicates with the Model to get the appropriate data. Then, it shows a new View that resembles the profile page. The Controller may take the data from the Model and feed it directly to the View -as proposed in the above diagram- or let the View fetch the data from the Model itself.

MVP (Model-View-Presenter)

In MVP, the View is the one in charge! each View calls its Presenter or has some events that the Presenter listens to.

Views in MVP don’t implement any logic, the Presenter is responsible for implementing all the logic and communicates with the View using some sort of interface.

E.g.: When the user clicks the “Save” button, the event handler in the View delegates to the Presenter’s “OnSave” method. The Presenter will do the required logic and any needed communication with the Model then, calls back the View through its interface so that the View can display that the save has been completed.

MVC vs. MVP

  • MVC doesn’t put the View in charge, Views act as slaves that the Controller can manage and direct.
  • In MVC, Views are stateless contrary to Views in MVP where they are stateful and can change over time.
  • In MVP, Views have no logic and we should keep them dumb as possible. On the other hand, Views in MVC may have some sort of logic.
  • In MVP, the Presenter is decoupled from the View and talks to it through an interface. This allows mocking the View in unit tests.
  • In MVP, Views are completely isolated from the Model. However, in MVC, Views can communicate with the Model to keep it up with the most up-to-date data.

enter image description here

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

The simplest answer is how the view interacts with the model. In MVP the view is updated by the presenter, which acts as as intermediary between the view and the model. The presenter takes the input from the view, which retrieves the data from the model and then performs any business logic required and then updates the view. In MVC the model updates the view directly rather than going back through the controller.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • I have downvoted, because afaik the model does not know anything about the view in MVC and there is not able to update it directly as you write. - anyone
  • Look at MVC on Wikipedia, that is exactly how it works. - anyone
  • Whether readers like it or not, plenty sources that can be found by googling state that in MVC the view subscribes to updates on the model. and in some cases might even be the controller and hence invoke such updates. If you don't like that, then go complain on those articles, or cite which 'bible' you think is the sole legitimate source, instead of downvoting answers that just relay the other info available out there! - anyone
  • The wording could definitely be improved, but it's true that the view subscribes to changes in the model in MVC. The model does not need to know the View in MVC. - anyone

There is this nice video from Uncle Bob where he briefly explains MVC & MVP at the end.

IMO, MVP is an improved version of MVC where you basically separate the concern of what you're gonna show (the data) from how you're gonna show (the view). The presenter includes kinda the business logic of your UI, implicitly imposes what data should be presented and gives you a list of dumb view models. And when the time comes to show the data, you simply plug your view (probably includes the same id's) into your adapter and set the relevant view fields using those view models with a minimum amount of code being introduced (just using setters). Its main benefit is you can test your UI business logic against many/various views like showing items in a horizontal list or vertical list.

In MVC, we talk through interfaces (boundaries) to glue different layers. A controller is a plug-in to our architecture but it has no such a restriction to impose what to show. In that sense, MVP is kind of an MVC with a concept of views being pluggable to the controller over adapters.

I hope this helps better.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

  • Important point from Uncle Bob: When originally invented by Trygve Reenskaug, MVC was meant for each widget not the entire form. - anyone

You forgot about Action-Domain-Responder (ADR).

As explained in some graphics above, there's a direct relation/link between the Model and the View in MVC. An action is performed on the Controller, which will execute an action on the Model. That action in the Model, will trigger a reaction in the View. The View, is always updated when the Model's state changes.

Some people keep forgetting, that MVC was created in the late 70", and that the Web was only created in late 80"/early 90". MVC wasn't originally created for the Web, but for Desktop applications instead, where the Controller, Model and View would co-exist together.

Because we use web frameworks (eg:. Laravel) that still use the same naming conventions (model-view-controller), we tend to think that it must be MVC, but it's actually something else.

Instead, have a look at Action-Domain-Responder. In ADR, the Controller gets an Action, which will perform an operation in the Model/Domain. So far, the same. The difference is, it then collects that operation's response/data, and pass it to a Responder (eg:. view()) for rendering. When a new action is requested on the same component, the Controller is called again, and the cycle repeats itself. In ADR, there's no connection between the Model/Domain and the View (Reponser's response).

Note: Wikipedia states that "Each ADR action, however, is represented by separate classes or closures.". This is not necessarily true. Several Actions can be in the same Controller, and the pattern is still the same.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

In a few words,

  • In MVC, View has the UI part, which calls the controller which in turn calls the model & model in turn fires events back to view.
  • In MVP, View contains UI and calls the presenter for implementation part. The presenter calls the view directly for updates to the UI part. Model which contains business logic is called by the presenter and no interaction whatsoever with the view. So here presenter does most of the work :)

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37

MVP

MVP stands for Model - View- Presenter. This came to a picture in early 2007 where Microsoft introduced Smart Client windows applications.

A presenter is acting as a supervisory role in MVP which binding View events and business logic from models.

View event binding will be implemented in the Presenter from a view interface.

The view is the initiator for user inputs and then delegates the events to the Presenter and the presenter handles event bindings and gets data from models.

Pros: The view is having only UI not any logics High level of testability

Cons: Bit complex and more work when implementing event bindings

MVC

MVC stands for Model-View-Controller. Controller is responsible for creating models and rendering views with binding models.

Controller is the initiator and it decides which view to render.

Pros: Emphasis on Single Responsibility Principle High level of testability

Cons: Sometimes too much workload for Controllers, if try to render multiple views in same controller.

Answered   2023-09-20 20:32:37