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POWhere to validate and process form submission in MVC website
 

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    <p>I'm working on a PHP based Model-View-Controller structured website. I understand that the Models should deal with business logic, views present HTML (or whatever) to the user, and the controllers facilitate this. Where I'm running stuck is with forms. <strong>How much processing do I put in the controller, and how much do I put the my model?</strong></p> <p>Assume that I'm trying to update a user's first &amp; last name. What I want to do is submit a form using AJAX to one of my controllers. I want the data to be validated (again) server side, and if valid save it to the database, and then return a JSON response back to the view, as either a success or error.</p> <p>Should I create an instance of my user model in the controller, or should I just have the controller relay to a static method in my model? Here is two examples of how this could work:</p> <p><strong>Option #1: Process POST in Model</strong></p> <pre><code>&lt;form action="/user/edit-user-form-submit/" method="post"&gt; &lt;input type="text" name="firstname"&gt; &lt;input type="text" name="lastname"&gt; &lt;button type="submit"&gt;Save&lt;/button&gt; &lt;/form&gt; &lt;?php class user { public function __construct($id){} // load user from database public function set_firstname(){} // validate and set first name public function set_lastname(){} // validate and set last name public function save_to_database(){} // save object fields to database public static function save_data_from_post() { // Load the user $user = new user($_POST['id']); // Was the record found in the db? if($user-&gt;exists) { // Try to set these fields if( $user-&gt;set_firstname($_POST['firstname']) and $user-&gt;set_lastname($_POST['lastname']) ) { // No errors, save to the dabase $user-&gt;save_to_database(); // Return success to view echo json_encode(array('success' =&gt; true)); } else { // Error, data not valid! echo json_encode(array('success' =&gt; false)); } } else { // Error, user not found! echo json_encode(array('success' =&gt; false)); } } } class user_controller extends controller { public function edit_user_form() { $view = new view('edit_user_form.php'); } public function edit_user_form_submit() { user::save_data_from_post(); } } ?&gt; </code></pre> <p><strong>Option #1: Process POST in Model</strong></p> <pre><code>&lt;form action="/user/edit-user-form-submit/" method="post"&gt; &lt;input type="text" name="firstname"&gt; &lt;input type="text" name="lastname"&gt; &lt;button type="submit"&gt;Save&lt;/button&gt; &lt;/form&gt; &lt;?php class user { public function __construct($id){} // load user from database public function set_firstname(){} // validate and set first name public function set_lastname(){} // validate and set last name public function save_to_database(){} // save object fields to database } class user_controller extends controller { public function edit_user_form() { $view = new view('edit_user_form.php'); } public function edit_user_form_submit() { // Load the user $user = new user($_POST['id']); // Was the record found in the db? if($user-&gt;exists) { // Try to set these fields if( $user-&gt;set_firstname($_POST['firstname']) and $user-&gt;set_lastname($_POST['lastname']) ) { // No errors, save to the dabase $user-&gt;save_to_database(); // Return success to view echo json_encode(array('success' =&gt; true)); } else { // Error, data not valid! echo json_encode(array('success' =&gt; false)); } } else { // Error, user not found! echo json_encode(array('success' =&gt; false)); } } } ?&gt; </code></pre> <p>The two examples do the exact same thing, I realize that. But is there a right and wrong way of doing this? I've read a lot about skinny controllers and fat models, where is where option #1 came from. How are you handling this? Thanks, and sorry for the long question!</p>
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