MVC4 Ideal controller coding

Question

I recieved an mvc4 application from my friend in which I will add some functions. but I found that he use controllers with more Than 6000 line of code. I want to know what's the ideal way to develop MVC4 application.

means to have many controllers with little number of line code in each one. or to have little number of controllers with big number of line code.

6000 lines is smelly code. You need to break it down into logical components which each area being controller. Think of a CRM system or something like that - you might have the following controllers, Admin, User, Customers, Communications etc - break it down logically — owenrumney, Jan 22 '14 at 08:50
Any code, not necessarily controller code, that have 6000 lines of code is suspicious, and will violate the S part of the SOLID principle. Google "skinny controller", that would be a good start. — Ronald, Jan 22 '14 at 09:03

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 22 '14 at 08:50

I don't think there's a 'right' answer to this, especially without any concrete examples.

Just think about maintainability going forward. A monolithic controller with multiple thousands of lines of code is likely to be much more difficult to understand (and therefore maintain) than a smaller, more targeted controller.

Also I would look carefully at the kind code that goes into your controller. The controller is there to link your models to your views and is not the best place for business logic code; I would personally put any significant business logic into some kind of repository that the controller references.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 24 '14 at 08:23

There definitely isn't a generic solution to this problem, however you can reduce the number of “lines” within a controller by using repositories which will also enable you to make use of the dependency injection pattern.

Dependency injection will also help with unit testing. The repository separates the logic into a separate (replaceable) class.

Searching these terms will provide lots of information (unfortunately far too much to put all the information in a SO question) – but here is some code that will help you in the right direction:

Create an interface to define the repository

public interface IGenericControllerRepository
{
    MyModel[] ComplexMethod();
}

Controller class:

public class GenericController : Controller
{
    private IGenericControllerRepository repository;

    public GenericController() : this(new GenericRepository()) { }

    public GenericController(IGenericControllerRepository genericRepository)
    {
        this.repository = genericRepository;
    }

    // GET: /controller
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        MyModel[] m = repository.ComplexMethod();
        return View("Index", m);
    }
}

Repository Class

public class GenericRepository : IGenericControllerRepository
{
    public MyModel[] ComplexMethod()
    {
        // do work here
    }
}

It is hard to judge if you should split your controller into smaller ones as that really depends on the number of methods rather than the number of lines ( for example you could have a few methods with hundreds of lines ) in which case separating them into another controller won’t achieve a desired outcome. Your controllers should be split into “application logical” containers.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 22 '14 at 08:57

0

I think your friend maybe put the business logic into the controllers. You should put the business logic to other class, folder or projects.

answered Jan 22 '14 at 08:57

YJ Chen

119
7

MVC4 Ideal controller coding

3 Answers3

Linked