MVC Architecture

Today we talked about the MVC Architecture, which is a design pattern that nicely separates database operations, logic, and presentation into separate components.

In our blog example, we saw how the blog Model code had separate functions for each CRUD operation. By keeping all direct interaction with the MySQL database in the blog Model, we can separate it from the business logic, contained in the Controller, that determines what to do for each page. This makes our code cleaner, easier to read, and easier to maintain if. If, for example, we decide to change the structure of our database tables, we only have to modify the code in the Model.

Once the Controller has determined what to do on any page, it fetches the appropriate data from the Model, and sends that data to the View, which has all the XHTML code necessary to display the page properly.

One of the nice things about common PHP Frameworks is that they offer clear MVC architecture. For example, I've been using Symfony recently, which forces my code to adhere to strict MVC principles.