CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdesign-patternsmodel-view-controller
minitauros
minitauros

Reputation: 2030

Method in model, service, or elsewhere?

I have a User model. A user can be reviewed. Thus I also have a Review model that represents a review of the user. With the review a rating of the user is saved.

Let's say I am to create a method that fetches the rating of the user based on all reviews of him, for example the getRating() method. Would I create this method on the User model? Or would you create for example a review-managing service class and include the method in that class?

Adding the getRating() method to the User model feels like a logical thing to do, but on the other hand things might get out of hand at one point, leaving me with a huge User model class.

(This is a simplified example, in reality the reviews can come from multiple sources).

(PS I have read some posts and articles about this, but I cannot find a satisfactory answer to my question).

Upvotes: 0

Views: 270

Answers (2)

deceze
deceze

Reputation: 522451

You shouldn't have "a User model" and "a Review model". The Model in MVC is your entire core app, it encompasses all data structures, services, database adapters and auxiliary stuff that makes your app work. What you should have is something like:

  • a User business object and a Review business object, purely defining the data structures
  • a UserRepository or UserDAO or UserORM or whatever other paradigm you use to interact with your database which translates data in the database to/from User objects; same for Review
  • a UserService which does things for user related tasks, like storing and retrieving them via the database interface, same for Review, or perhaps some differently named service being responsible for both together

It doesn't all have to map 1:1; a business object instance may map to multiple database tables, which the corresponding *Repository/*DAO/whatever takes care of, and multiple of those may be combined into one service making something useful happen.

The action to retrieve some specific data then belongs into a service.

Upvotes: 1

Tunbola Ogunwande
Tunbola Ogunwande

Reputation: 133

Why not add the getRating() to the Review Model. The method will accept a User Object or a User Id depending on the logic in the method. The User Model has no business knowing about reviews. My thoughts though.

Upvotes: 0

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