Explain Model View Controller
- by Channel72
My experience with developing dynamic websites is limited mostly to Java servlets. I've used Tomcat to develop various Java servlets, and I wouldn't hesitate to say that I'm reasonably proficient with this technology, as well as with client-side HTML/CSS/Javascript for the front-end.
When I think "dynamic website", I think: user requests a URL with a query string, server receives the query, and then proceeds to output HTML dynamically in order to respond to the query. This often involves communication with a database in order to fetch requested data for display. This is basically the idea behind the doGet method of a Java HttpServlet.
But these days, I'm hearing more and more about newer frameworks such as Django and Ruby on Rails, all of which take advantage of the "Model View Controller" architecture. I've read various articles which explain MVC, but I'm having trouble really understanding the benefits. I understand that the general idea is to separate business logic from UI logic, but I fail to see how this is anything really different from normal web programming. Web programming, by it's very nature, forces you to separate business logic (back-end server-side programming) from UI programming (client-side HTML or Javascript), because the two exist in entirely different spheres of programming.
Question: What does MVC offer over something like a Java servlet, and more importantly, what exactly is MVC and how is it different from what you would normally do to develop a dynamic website using a more traditional approach such as a Java servlet (or even something older like CGI). If possible, when explaining MVC, please provide an example which illustrates how MVC is applied to the web development process, and how it is beneficial.
