[development] is drupal a MVC stuff

[Pierre Rineau]

On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 10:40 -0600, larry at garfieldtech.com wrote:
> The defining attribute of MVC is, IMO, that the View component has 
> direct access to the Model component using an observer relationship, 
> without going through a separate Controller.
> 
> hook_page_alter() is in no way a direct observer relationship between 
> the View component and the Model component.  *_alter hooks are a 
> pipes-and-filter approach, or, arguably, visitor pattern.
> 
> Drupal is very much not an MVC design.  It's not true PAC either, but I 
> have and do argue that it is closer to PAC than MVC.
> 
> Someone needs to correct the Wikipedia page, which is simply wrong in 
> this regard.
> 
> --Larry Garfield

If you want to stick to strict MVC definition, yes Drupal is not, but in
the most software I saw or developed with until now, not anyone had a
real MVC implementation.

In MVC, this Controller -> Model -> View (data flow)
In Drupal, data flow is:
 - Controller (menu router) -> Model (menu callback, module code)
(direct association)
 - Model (indirect association through the theme() calls) -> View
 - View -> Controller (indirect association, through user clicks)

This is an incomplete and simple (without the observer/observable
pattern) implementation, but I think it does sticks to MVC pattern.

This is an opinion, I think it can be discussed.

Hook system is a different pattern used for different goals, mostly used
to alter data (it does not alter the behavior I described upper, except
maybe in some really weird cases).

Pierre.


Event if observer pattern is not really here, I think it sticks to MVC
pattern.