MVVM is a Microsoft design pattern that existed before ASP.Net MVC. Can anyone through light on differences between MVVM and the new MVC pattern?.
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- 3MVC (which is usable outside of the latest ASP.NET MVC implementation) predates MVVM by a long, long time... See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controllerReed Copsey– Reed Copsey2010-09-17 22:06:49 +00:00Commented Sep 17, 2010 at 22:06
- 1Edited to indicate specifically that it's Microsoft ASP.Net MVC. I know MVC predates MVVM but ASP.Net MVC is a successor of MVVM even though MVVM is based on MVC itself.A_Var– A_Var2010-09-18 19:09:31 +00:00Commented Sep 18, 2010 at 19:09
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Can anyone throw light on differences between MVVM and the new MVC pattern?.
Yes: When using ASP.NET MVC the MVC pattern uses the controller to render the model directly into the view. This is perfectly acceptable for trivial projects with a small number of objects. Where this can become a problem is that the concerns of the UI layer can bleed through to the underlying (domain) model.
When using MVVM then you are adding an abstraction between the Model and the View, which is of course the ViewModel. This allows the author to project into the view an object that is most readily consumed by the view. The ViewModel can contain things which would be out of place in the (domain) Model. The cost associated here is that you need to have mapping logic which transposes the data from the model to the View Model. Tools like AutoMapper can assist with this chore.
A simple example of this might be the Model doesn't require certain fields as required, but a particular View does. Rather than baking this logic into the user interface, if it is attached to the ViewModel, then other UI's can consume the same VM without having to duplicate logic that was baked into the first user interface.
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MVC and MVVM are actually quite different. There seems to be a fair bit of misunderstanding of MVVM when talked about with ASP MVC. The practice of making 'View Models' in MVC, which are specific classes to feed views, while good practice is not true to the spirit of MVVM, and in fact is just a cleaner version of MVC.
MVVM is more suited to the desktop using WPF or similar, or purely in the browser using a JavaScript framework such as knockout.js. The pattern is quite different to MVC and involves views being 'subscribed' to the model.
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I would venture to suggest that MVVM is Microsoft's design pattern and ASP.NET MVC, which is farily recent, is a specific implementation by Microsoft (that doesn't necessarily adhere to either MVC or MVVM but is similar). And as suggested by Reed, MVC has been around since the 70's.
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Both MVC & MVVM are architectural patterns. MVC has its roots way back to Smalltalk. ASP.NET MVC is Microsoft's implementation of the MVC pattern using ASP.NET framework.
Both the patterns deal with separation of concerns. MVC is more to do with the interaction of various commonly used layers in an application like Model (data layer), View (presentation layer) and Controller (business logic layer).
With advanced databinding capabilities of WPF and Silverlight, MVVM was more suited and publicised as the next big thing. Martin Fowler generalized these patterns as presentation patterns in his Enterprise Application Architecture book.
One advantage I see in using a ViewModel is that it allows you to test the application code better using unit tests. Because of this reason I find MVVM or at least the ViewModel bit of it being used quite often in ASP.NET MVC applications as well.
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A_Var
Yeah ViewModel exists in ASP.Net MVC as well. Can't we integrate the same advanced capibilities of Silverlight with presentation layer in MVC?. I was just wondering how one outweight's the another in web app development.