i'm writing an app using the Model-View-Controller pattern and it's got my brain in knots.
It's a 3D simulation with a network mode. (Multiple views of the same data over a network). i figure MVC is the way to go. i've just finished writing a sockets class and about to implement the network component.

the question is where does the network component go? is it a view or a controller? from the way i see it, it could be either (at the moment i'm sticking with it being a view). some with experience would have a better answer.

thanks

Just a quick question. What exactly does the "network component" you're inventing do?

sorry i should said something about the network architecture i'm using.

it's more or less a client-server architecture. an app can either be a client or server (obviously, there can be only one server). it's an architecture that's popular with most LAN games (like unreal tournament) when u can either be a server or client.

that said, the "network component" handles all IP data communication between server and client. (the server's model and it's observers).

In my view:
- The MODEL is your 3D Model (easy)
- The Controller is the interface used by clients to manipulate the 3d world.
- The View is what they see.

In my view, the rest is just infrastructure. Including the networking code. This is stuff you can get from off-the-shelf libraries on Sf.net.

nope the model isn't my 3d model. the 3d models are with my view. the model holds the data the view needs to render the 3d models (just as the UML diagram above shows).

but i think i've already figured it out. the network part can either be view or controller. wherever i put it, it'll break the pattern but who cares.

ps: i'm avoiding 3rd party libraries as speed is of the essence so i'm getting as low-level as i possibly can.

sbucareer:

In your UML above I can see the Model object compsiting the observer object. The Observer Object generalizing the view and Controller object. I can't figure out the design pattern you are employing in this project. If it was Observer pattern which I think it might well be, then observer has to be the controller because it updates the rest of the objects of the changes from the view and the model.

The Model is the model of your system and it encapsulates network, data, and the algometric semantics of your design.

I don't know much about the observer pattern but this is how i've got it working.

The Observer is just an interface inherited by view and controller. All observers must implement an update() method.
My controllers modifies the model, My view displays the model. My Model has a list of observers.
During the simulation, my model has a method which loops through all observers calling their update() methods. in the case of the view, it queries the model for data and in case of the controller it updates the model data.

so my question was should the part that handles all network communication be a server or client? but i've figured it can be any. if i run into any problems, i'll ask you guys again.

thanks

the question is where does the network component go?

I will tell you, CONTROLLER.
leave view for view
model for model
and controller for controller.
never mix them up for ease in future maintenance of the application.

Viper is absolutely right in the theoretically strictest form of MVC, I just wish I can be disciplined enough not to cheat by inserting DB queries into my "views", and generating outputs from my "controllers" because I dont want to spend the 30 minutes to amend a header file.