CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptmodel-view-controllerangularjs
Paul Lysak
Paul Lysak

Reputation: 1294

Is AngularJS really MVC?

I'm looking through examples on the AngularJS home page — specifically “Add Some Control”. I don’t quite understand how it maps to MVC pattern.

It’s more or less clear that the template (index.html) can be thought of as the view, objects constructed by TodoCtrl from todo.js as the controller, but where is a model? Attributes like ng-model map to some internal pieces of the framework and don’t directly expose an object which we could call a model.

Is it correct to call AngularJS an MVC framework?

Upvotes: 28

Views: 14467

Answers (4)

Don M
Don M

Reputation: 986

If anything that can store data in a object is considered a model than every front end framework (view) could be considered to have a model. They can all store data in objects and present them in the view. I think calling angular a mvc is really a marketing ploy, trying to make angular seem like it is more than it is.

See: https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/software-development/tutorial-angularjs-mvc-implementation

In the controller, is where they give their example of angular's as a model. If it can't assist in the storage of persistent data it isn't much of a model.

Upvotes: 3

Reza
Reza

Reputation: 393

The core idea behind MVC is that you have clear separation in your code between managing its data (model), the application logic (controller), and presenting the data to the user (view). The view gets data from the model to display to the user. When a user interacts with the application by clicking or typing, the controller responds by changing data in the model. Finally, the model notifies the view that a change has occurred so that it can update what it displays. In Angular applications, the view is the Document Object Model (DOM), the controllers are JavaScript classes, and the model data is stored in object properties.

Upvotes: 23

user1628524
user1628524

Reputation: 99

I havent read up on Angular. However, keep in mind that "true" MVC means that the Model contains business Logic, the Controller takes care of communicating user input to the Model, and the View gets its own data from the Model. Many so called MVC frameworks are actually not implementing MVC the right way: They are overloading the Controller With to much responsibility, as in making the Controller responsible also to update the View. That is not what the Controller was intended to do, and in such cases you get what is called a "fat Controller". There is a misconseption among many webdevelopers that the View is simply a "template". This is both true and false; It is a template but it get its own data directly from the Model - not via the Controller.

But as I started out saying: I havent yet read up on Angular, but you might have so yourself and you should be able to find out if Angular is truly a MVC framework by looking at what the different Components in the Framework does.

Upvotes: 8

Jani Hartikainen
Jani Hartikainen

Reputation: 43243

The attributes map into the scope variable as defined in the controller. For example, if you have some JS objects which represent your business logic, you can put those in the scope variable, and then the attributes can be mapped into the model itself instead of some arbitrary values in the scope variable.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions