Which part of MVC do Magento blocks belong to?

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2 responses to “Which part of MVC do Magento blocks belong to?”

1. 

   January 19, 2011

   kiat

   I put block as V because it is often tied with a phtml. And when it is not, it still generates html codes. But the line is often blur. In SalesRule and Rule modules, the main rendering engine to output the conditions in html is actually in models. So I can argue that Model in Magento is V.
2. 

   January 20, 2011

   芳草苑主

   Dealing with output is necessary but not sufficient condition of being a View. What View is dealing with is the part that users “often” want to customise. The arguable thing is how often is “often”.

   Take Magento navigation (generating top menu) for example, because it recursively goes down the category tree, it is not easy to be template driven. So Magento put all the html output in a block class. Seeing that, you can say Magento block is View. However, in my opinion, Magento should not put the html output in this block class, because:

   • Top menu is “often” customised.
   • It could be template driven, but Magento did not try hard enough.
   • I am intended to regard blocks as Model.

   Take adminhtml form elements for another example, they look gorgeous and consistent. Magento has made most web elements I can ever think of ready to use. I hardly need customise one for my own purposes. Magento allows me to “define” the elements but not encourages me to “customise” a new one (although customisation is still possible). If we all the time had to “customise” something, we were likely lose consistency. It falls into my logic that these elements are Model instead of View although they output standard html code.