Being an iPhone app developer, you must have asked this question from yourself that, how can I organize the code in my iPhone app. Well, MVC is the answer to this question. It stands for Model-View-Controller and it is an exceptionally powerful app architectural pattern.
Another question that MVC answers are, how data can be passed from one part of the app to another. Object-Oriented Programming helps in organizing the swift code in classes, having properties and functions. MVC is built on top of the OOP, it also provides a flow for the interaction and data in your iPhone app.
In this article, I have discussed how you can use MVC to structure your iPhone app and its data in a better way. By the end of this article, you will understand why leading companies providing iPhone app development services implement MVC pattern to build the iPhone apps.
So let us first begin with What is MVC?
What MVC does is, transfer messages, No, not those chat messages but send messages from one part of the app to another. In iPhone app development, a message is nothing but simply a name of the method or the parameters associated with it sent to an instance of the object. Messages are often complex in iPhone app development.
MVC comprises of 3 components–
Model-It is considered to be a wrapper of the data.
View– It represents the UI.
Controller– It works as the intermediate between Model and View.
All these three components have a distinct role-
Model-It holds the specific set of data, also contains Logic which manipulates that data.
View- It is the object that a user sees, in a User interface.
Controller- It contains the logic which goes between the Model and View. It helps in transferring the messages between View and Model and vice versa.
Why use MVC?
Most of the iOS frameworks use MVC pattern to structure data flow and messaging. One of the jobs of an iPhone app developer is to keep app code maintainable. This can be done, only if one follows a specific structure to design apps and MVC is that pattern. It prevents your code to become a big pile of chaos, this is the top and foremost benefit of using MVC pattern to build iPhone apps.
MVC in iPhone app development
It is the most fundamental concept to understand in iPhone app development. Most of Apple’s frameworks use MVC pattern, that is why, it gets important to understand its application in iPhone app development.
In iPhone app development, especially in the UIKit framework, the MVC pattern is used the most.
The final part of this MVC structure is the flow of data, and the following is the flow, how messages get transferred from one part to another-
-The view tells the controller about user interaction.
-The Controller changes the View and Model according to the data changes.
-The Model then notifies the controller about the data changes.
There can be two ways through which data gets transferred from one part to another-
- Top Flow- View-Controller- Model-happens when user interaction n View causes the data in Model to change.
- Bottom Flow-Model-Controller-View-happens data in the Model changes and View has to update accordingly.
Parting Thoughts
With this, I wrap up the article, hoping that it has been informative to you. Now that you understand the concept of MVC in iPhone app development, understand that when it comes to software architectural patterns, you have great options to choose from like, Model-View-View-Model (MVVM), Reactive Programming (RP), and Model-View-Whatever (MVW). One thing that never changes in MVC is the messages. The data moves in two ways only, First from Model to View, and another from View to Model. These data flows go through the controller only, which further decide what should happen to the data.
